Parchment Burning

During Sukkot, 1939, German soldiers forced their way into the synagogue in Siedlce, Poland. They beat the Jews who were praying inside. When people tried to escape, they were shot. Yosef Rubin was killed in this way. ( Association of Siedlcers in Israel ) A few months later, the synagogue was burned to the ground. According to some reports, homeless Jews who had been living in the synagogue died inside. ( Yizkor Book )

Skalat 1942 At the end of August, 1942, the Nazis began deporting the Jews of Skalat. They began with the weakest segments of the population - orphans and the elderly. 600 Jews were brought to the local synagogue, where they were kept overnight. During this time, some of them were killed. The next morning, when it was time to transport the Jews to the extermination camp in Belzec, the dead bodies were thrown onto the truck along with the living. ( Virtual Shtetl ) Testimony from that evening corroborates this. A woman, Mrs. Weissbrod, who had taken the place of her elderly mother in the synagogue reported that "The shul was crowded, suffocating. Screams! Sobs! The old people sigh, cough, clamor and faint. All that time in the heat without even a drop of water. A few of the aged and sick, lacking stamina, had already died." She continues that when the Nazis arrived to load the victims onto trucks, "When all the victims had been loaded aboard the trucks, one of the mil...

Kharkov, Ukraine 1941 In late 1941, the Nazis ordered that all Jews in Kharkov relocate to some huts on the outskirts of the city. Those who were not able to relocated were locked into the synagogue on Meshchansky Street. These were mostly elderly, disabled or very young Jews. According to testimony gathered in 1943, "a large number of them from to death and others died of hunger. Altogether 400 persons died in the synagogue building." ( Yad Vashem )

Vienna, Austria Aug. 29, 1981 In 1981, the Stadttempel of Vienna was attacked by the Abu Nidal Organization in a terrorist attack.  Many guests had come to the synagogue to celebrate a bar mitzva, something the attackers knew about and chose to exploit. ( Arutz Sheva ) Two Palestinian gunmen tried to break into the synagogue, but the gates to the compound were closed. Instead, they open-fired with machine guns and tossed four grenades into the crowd. Two people were killed: a mother, who had thrown herself on top of a friend's baby to shield him from the grenade blast, and an elderly man. ( JTA ) Another 21 people were injured. ( New York Times )  The windows of the building shattered, and the facade was riddled with bullet holes. A pool of blood formed at the front door.  The same synagogue had been attacked in 1979, but without casualties. Another attack was foiled in 2016. ( The Jewish Press )

Lubieszow, Ukraine 3 November, 1942 On 3 November, 1942, the Nazis rounded up dozens of Jewish artisans and their families and locked them in the synagogue. One of these Jews, Machmendler, attacked the Nazi commander in a desperate attempt, cutting his throat with a knife. In retaliation for this attack, Machmendler and several other Jews were killed in the synagogue. The rest were shot outside the building. ( Yad Vashem ) A German report from 1945 described the event: "As many as up to 200 Jews were taken under guard to the synagogue, where they were stripped naked and ... abused. Afterward, the Gebietskommissar read aloud a document stating that the Jewish people didn't exist any longer since they all had been annihilated. At that moment a dentist, I don't remember his last name, attacked the Gebietskommissar and wounded him seriously in the throat with a razor; the dentist was killed [on the spot] by blows from [weapon] butts...Others were shot to death between ...

Antwerp, Belgium 20 October, 1981 Exactly a year after a similar bombing of a synagogue in Paris , a bomb exploded outside a synagogue in Antwerp, killing three and wounding 106 people. ( NY Times ) The Palestinian terror group Black September, which also carried out the attack at the Munich Olympics, placed a bomb inside a truck parked outside the building. It was detonated in the morning of Simchat Torah, blowing in the doors of the synagogue as well as storefront windows along the street. Eight buildings were significantly damaged. ( UPI ) The synagogue was located in the middle of the Antwerp diamond district, so the explosion also scattered diamonds amidst the debris. Police closed down the street and gathered the rubble so that diamond brokers could sift through to find the gems. "Survivors told of scores of injured, stumbling through clouds of smoke and dust, blood streaming from their faces and dead and injured on the street." ( Reading Eagle )

Polonnoe July, 1648 Nathan Hanover was the author of Yeven Metzula, one of the main Jewish sources that tells of the Chmielnicki Massacres. In that book, he tells of the death of his teacher, Rabbi Samson, a Kabbalist, in the city of Polonnoe. "Every day an angel would come to him and learn with him the secrets of the Torah. The Kabbalist wrote a commentary on the Zohar based on the Kabbala of the Ar"i, but it was never published. The angel told him before the pogrom that they needed to repent greatly, so as to avoid the evil decree. So he spoke several times in the synagogue and warned the people to repent, and on the impending tragedy. And they did repent, in all the communities, but it was to no avail, since the decree was already sealed. When the cruel enemies reached the city, the kabbalist went to the synagogue with three hundred wise men, all dressed in shrouds and their prayer shawls on their heads, and they busied themselves with prayer, until the enemies reache...

Kowel, Ukraine 1942 An article about the Jews of Kowel on the Yad Vashem website states that: "During the months of August and September 1942, thousands of Jews were herded into the synagogue in the town of Kowel, Poland, where they were imprisoned until their execution. In their fear and desperation, many of them wrote on the walls of the synagogue using whatever they could - unsharpened pencils, pens and even their own fingernails." The article then lists several examples: "Reuven Atlas, know that your wife Gina and your son Imush perished here. Our child wept bitterly. He did not want to die. Go to war and avenge the blood of your wife and your only son. We are dying although we did no wrong. - Gina Atlas" "You who come after us - Remember! The innocent blood of our young people will be spilled here in an hour's time. Blood clean as the waters of the Kinneret. We demand vengeance! Cruel vengeance! - Yehuda Schechter." The Jews imprisoned...

Rouen, Gaul 1096 The massacre of the Jews of Rouen is recorded in an autobiography by abbot Guibert of Nogent. He relates that Crusaders from Rouen had an epiphany: Before they traveled all the way to Jerusalem to kill Jews, they should take care of business at home. "We want to attack the enemies of God in the east after traveling great distances, while before our eyes are the Jews, of all races God's greatest enemy." They took up their weapons and forced the Jews into the synagogue and slaughtered everyone who would not convert. (Norman Golb,  The Jews in Medieval Normandy 117-118 )

Krasnosielc 6 September, 1939 The murder of Jews in the Krasnocielc synagogue is somewhat atypical of the Holocaust period. On 6 September 1939, a group of fifty Jewish men were ordered to work repairing a bridge. After they had completed the work, the Jews were locked for the evening in the synagogue. That night, an SS man and a military policeman came into the synagogue and shot all the men to death. Both German men were arrested and brought to trial. The first was convicted and sentenced to three years in jail. The second was sentenced to nine years in prison, though this was eventually reduced to three years upon appeal. The Jews in the synagogue were buried nearby by a neighbor., Mr. Zhilinsky. He described "how the Germans took the bodies of the murdered Jews out of the synagogue and threw them in the ditches beside it and covered them with Torah books, poured some combustible material and set it all on fire." ( Essay by David Shachar )

Narol, Poland 1648 In 1648, the army of Chmielnicki arrived in Narol. Many Jews from neighboring villages had come to Narol for protection. The Jews crowded into the synagogue and attempted to defend themselves. However, the Cossacks set fire to the building, killing those inside. ( Virtual Shtetl ) Nathan Hannover describes the scene in Yeven Metzula: "Many hundreds shut themselves up in the synagogue, but they broke down the doors and first slew the Jews inside it and then burnt the synagogue with the slain. There was no such slaughter in the whole of Poland." He continues: "A woman who remained alive, related to me that several hundred women, and children, and a few men survived the carnage These had no food for five days and they ate human flesh. They cut off organs from the slain and roasted them on fire and ate them. Many thousands of the slain were eaten by dogs and pigs." One of the survivors, Moshe Kohen of Narol, afterward became the rabbi in Me...

22 September 1939 Turek, Poland Turek was one in the long list of Polish communities that were occupied by the Nazis in September 1939. On September 22, 1939, a group of Jews were burned to death in the synagogue on Szeroka street. ( Virtual Shtetl ) In Shraga Bar-Sela's telling of the occupation, he mentions the fire in the synagogue but not any loss of life. ( Turek Yizkor Book , p303) Others mention that 600 or 700 Jews were gathered in the synagogue and then deported, but make not mention of killing in the building. As in most places, the murder of Jews was accompanied by humiliations. In a report, General Walter Petzel wrote that "In Turek...a number of Jews were driven into a synagogue, forced to crawl through the bench seats while singing and constantly being beaten by SS men with whips. They were then forced to take down their pants, to be beaten on their naked behinds. One Jew, who out of fear had gone in his pants, was forced to smear excrement in the faces of t...

Jerusalem 1099 The events of the first crusade were extremely influential in terms of how Ashkenazi Jews viewed martyrdom. In particular, when it comes to martyrdom in synagogues, the story of Yitzchak the Hassid in Mainz was widely disseminated and has already been covered on this blog. However, another major synagogue massacre occurred once the crusaders arrived in the Holy Land. The Crusaders reached Jerusalem on June 7, 1099. They put the city under siege and set about looking for wood to build ladders and siege engines. They eventually disassembled a ship in the port of Jaffa for the planks. On July 14 the assault began and the city was breached. Once inside Jerusalem, the Crusaders brutally massacred the city's inhabitants, in a manner that exceeded even the bloody norms of the time. Jews had fought alongside the Muslim soldiers who defended the city. The city's Muslim population was slaughtered on the Temple Mount, while the Jews retreated to the synagogue and pr...

Rakov, Belarus 4 February 1942 The Jews of Rakov were driven into the Koholodnaya Synagogue. They were forced to undress, robbed and beaten. The Germans poured gasoline over the building and ignited it with grenades. 950 people were burned to death in the Rakov synagogue. L. Shaus wrote that "In the shtetl of Rakov they herded 900 Jews into the synagogue and burned them to death. Anyone who tried to escape from the fire was shot with submachine guns." ( The Untold Stories ) Another testimony expands on the events: "The entire Jewish community, 950 souls, was put in the yard of the synagogue. They took ten of the healthiest people and separated them. The rest were taken group by group to the entrance of the synagogue, where they were shot and killed by automatic machine guns. The ten separated people were ordered to throw the individual bodies in the synagogue. As soon as the last of the people were thrown in the synagogue, the ten people were pushed inside withou...

There are many books that compile the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people. Such lists already appear in early rabbinic literature surrounding the various fast days, but needless to say there has been ample opportunity to add to the lists. One of the most "popular" of these books is Shevet Yehuda, written by Shlomo ibn Verga in the early 16th century. This work is itself formed around a pre-existing nucleus that was found in a book by Yehuda ibn Verga. Shevet Yehuda lists 64 persecutions amidst other tales about Jewish life. The author of Shevet Yehuda relates the following story, which he lists as the 36th event but specifies neither the location nor the date: "In one of the cities of Ashkenaz, there was a decree that all Jews must renounce their faith within three days, and if not they would all be burned. "The poor people gathered and fasted for three days. They agreed that if they were not answered within three days that they would all gather in ...