ICHENHAUSEN: First Impressions
Recently, Arnold Erlanger who was born in Ichenhausen and with whom I have been corresponding regularly about his birthplace invited me to the launch of his autobiography "Ein Schwabe ueberlebt Auschwitz" published, in German, by Wissner, Augsburg. I went there and this is an account of my visit.
Arnold Erlanger spent the entire period of World War II in Nazi Concentration camps. Of the several hundred Jews from Ichenhausen who were "transported" by the Nazis to these murderous camps there were only two survivors. Arnold is one of them.
TUE 2 JULY 2002
I collected my travelling companion HH, one of Arnold's cousins who was born in pre-war Nuernberg (Nuremburg), and we drove to Stansted where we met CP,a lecturer in Jewish history, who was also flying to germany to attend the launch. On arrival at Friedrichshafen, HH and I took a series of trains to Guenzburg. We passed through Laupheim West, the station for Laupheim in Wuerttemburg from where the Rieser family emigrated. Our journey to Ichenhausen was completed by taxi.
We stayed at the Gasthof Zum Hirsch, a comfortable friendly establishment with good food, in the very centre of Ichenhausen (population about 8000 currently). As soon as we arrived we were greeted warmly by Arnold who was sitting in the restaurant along with his older sister Rosi. Rosi had left Ichenhausen for Israel some years before Kristallnacht. This was the first time for more than 66 years that Arnold and his sister had been together in their birthplace. Also present were the widow of Moritz Schmid and her daughter U. Moritz Schmid was a Mayor of Ichenhausen after WW2 who saved the Synagogue from demolition and also restored it to its former glory. The Nazis had vandalised the synagogue (and the Jewish cemetery) and after the war all that remained was an empty shell. Mayor Schmid realised that if the walls of this wrecked building were demolished, any hope of restoring the building would be lost. The building was for sale and Schmid persuaded the town council to buy it to be used as a Fire Station until such time that another building could be obtained. Once this occurred, Schmid organised the reconstruction of the Synagogue which now serves as a meeting hall and a place for cultural events. We spent the evening chatting, drinking and eating. We were joined later by the present Mayor of Ichenhausen and one of the councillors who is married to Schmid's daughter.
WED 3 JULY 2002
At 9 am we (that is Arnold , Rosi, HH and myself) met for breakfast. After this we went to the Rathaus which is housed in one of Ichenhausen's two castles (in the Obererer Schloss) where we met up with the Mayor .
I noted in the Mayor's office a photograph showing the committee responsible for modernising the Rathaus in the 1920s. Amongst the people in the picture was councillor 'Craemer' who I suspect was a member of the Kraemer family into which the Seligmanns married.
The Mayor kindly arranged for a car and driver to take us to the Jewish Cemetery which is on the edge of town in a wooded area just off the road to Krumbach. Arnold said that he used to play football for the local Ichenhausen team in a field in this location.
Arnold pointed out the small circular building with a veranda which served as some kind of "chapel". The veranda which he helped construct as a boy is still intact. The stones in the cemetery stand in about six parallel rows on the sloping site. The grass is long and Arnold remarked that since Schmid's recent death the level of care of the cemetery has declined. Arnold's mother was the last person to be buried in this cemetery, in 1942. He and Rosi paid their respects at the grave and read prayers. After that we explored the cemetery looking at the stones and reading the often barely legible inscriptions. A large proportion of the stones were members of the Gerstle family. I found one stone marking the grave of one Lottie Rieser.
We were driven back to town. It was a hot day and I persuaded my companions to take a mid-morning drink in the Marktplatz. Arnold remembered fondly that when he lived in Ichenhausen Jews and Gentiles drank together offering each other drinks in their respective cafes. There was a fountain in the middle of the square which HH noted bore four carved inscriptions: "Ichenhausen", "Peace", "Conciliation" and "forgiveness". Arnold recalled that in former years there had been some kind of monument glorifying the Nazis or Hitler on this site.
After our break Arnold took us on a guided walk.
Opposite our cafe was a very imposing four or five storey building, once the home and shop of the Wimpfheimer family. Two buildings away on Markt Strasse just next to the newly built Sparkasse(which in Arnold's youth was in the same location) was the house of the Seligmann family. This house, almost as large as that of the Wimpfheimers, has a gabled facade and a plot which stretches a long way behind it. In Arnold's childhood when the house was still occupied by the Seligmann family the plot was mainly a garden but now the house has been extended backwards into the garden, obliterating most of it. Arnold recalled from his youth the tall tree which still stands at the end of what was the garden.
Proceeding along Marktstrasse we passed a shop which had been Ichenhausen's non-Kosher butcher. Arnold recalled that ther had been more than one Kosher butcher in Ichenhausen, reflecting its large Jewish population. Ichenhausen had its own Jewish school, attended by Arnold, which in its heyday had more than 240 pupils.
We rounded the corner into Neue Banhofstrasse. On the corner of this street and the continuation of Marktstrasse is an architecturally very fine house, once the residence of the Friedberger family. Arnold's family home is a quarter of the way down Neue Banhofstrasse and is now the premises of a bar/pub. It was the home and shop of Erlanger , one of Ichenhausen's Kosher butchers. Further down the street and on the opposite side is a small cottage, a farmhouse, which before the war had a small field behind it. The Erlanger family bought milk from this farm. On religious festivals, the Erlangers took their own special pail to the farmer and the cow was milked straight in to it. Somewhere near this farm was one of Ichenhausen's Mikvehs (Jewish ritual bath). From opposite Arnold's family home two storks could be seen nesting on the roof of the Unterer Schloss. Arnold recalled seeing storks nesting there when he lived as a child in Ichenhausen. We walked back along Neue Bahnhofstrasse past the Friedberger house and another building which had housed the stationery shop "Heller und Weglein" where Rosi once worked.
We entered Guenzburger Strasse on which both the Kraemer and the Neuburger families lived, near the Evangelische Kirche. A small building on this street opposite the start of Vorderer Ostersgasse used to house the Jewish Cafe Weil. We walked along Vorderer Ostergasse towards the synagogue past the former Police Station and a plot, now a parking place for the Zum Hirsch, on which used to stand a Jewish bakery.
During our walking tour Arnold pointed out some the homes of families which had been actively anti-Semitic: they were a minority of the non-Jewish families even at the height of the period of Nazi persecution. Arnold kept emphasizing to us how tolerant of the Jews were the gentiles of Ichenhausen. The Jews and non-Jews of Ichenhausen lived side-by-side to one another in a degree of harmony which was unusually large in comparison with many other parts of Germany even before the Hitler era.
At the other end of Vorderer Ostergasse is the beautifully restored Synagogue. Men entered from a courtyard on one side (the south side) of the building and women from the opposite side from what is now a carpark. In former times this was the site of a building used for ceremonies such as the naming of Jewish babies. Arnold recalled that he and other jewish children would gather together to sing songs to the baby at these naming ceremonies. The courtyard from which men entered the synagogue has a wall on which is recorded the names of the victims, from Ichenhausen, of the Holocaust . At right angle to the synagogue and attached to it, forming one of the boundaries of the courtyard, is a three storey building which housed the family of a tailor who also assisted in the synagogue.
Opposite the end of Vordere Ostergasse in Von-Stain-Strasse, facing the synagogue, is a very solidly built imposing building which was the residence of Ichenhausen's rabbi. This building now house Ichenhausen's archives. We visited the home of the late Moritz Schmid which is also in Von-Stain-Strasse. Then Arnold introduced me to the archivist with whom I spent sime time conversing later that day. He told me that now Ichenhausen has a very large Turkish population. We returned to the Zum Hirsch for lunch. Arnold had brought Jewish Ichenhausen momentarily back to life with his magnificent memory. As HH put it Ichenhausen was a German version of "Fiddler on the Roof"!
We reassembled at 5pm in the synagogue for the launch of Arnold's book. There is a small vestibule, the width of the west side of the synagogue through which one passes before enytering the main hall of the building. Above the vestibule was the two-tiered (reflecting the large size of the former congregation) gallery where the women used to attend services. The ceiling of the main hall is painted a light blue colour with gold stars of various sizes scattered around a centrally placed large star giving it a Baroque feel. A fresco on the east wall, in trompe-l'oeil, depicted the holy area (Torah screen) where the Holy Scrolls had been kept. During its life as a Fire Station this section of the wall had formed part of the vehicle entrance.
The proceedings commenced with a press photography session as the hall gradually filled with those attending the launch, probably about 150 in number. Then followed a series of speeches: first the President of the local Bezirk (an administrative district), then the mayor of Ichenhausen, then Gernot Roemer (a local historian who has written much about the Jews in Bavaria) who edited Arnold's book, then a representative from the firm which published the book. After these speeches Arnold gave a very well delivered, dignified yet moving and impressive speech. He pointed out that it was in this very same building he had his Bar-Mitzvah. Arnold's speech was, I felt, by far the best of all those given.
Arnold then presented a few signed copies of the book to the local dignitaries before inviting the audience to fire questions at him. These he handled skilfully. HH then stood up and said a few words about Arnold. Shortly after this Rosi joined her younger brother and made a short speech. Brother and sister then hugged each other. Tirelessly, for about 45 minutes, Arnold signed copies of the book and talked to all of the people, most of the audience, who had purchased it. It was my impression that very few of the local people of Arnold's age group were present at this launch (maybe many of these had not survived the War).
We returned to Zum Hirsch for a dinner hosted by Herr Roemer. This was a lively and jovial occasion.
The book launch was a very moving occasion. As Arnold put it to me, and I am fully in agreement with him, it was a unique and very special event: an event whose specialness is impossible to convey in words to someone who was not present. Arnold and Rosi left with the Roemers to Augsburg where he was to attend on the following day another ceremony to mark the publishing of his book.
THURSDAY 4 JULY 2002
After breakfast I set off for a stroll around Ichenhausen. It was market day. there were about four or five stalls, mostly selling food and plants. One sold herbs and spices. A small market in comparison with those found in similarly sized small French towns. In a bookshop-cum-stationery shop I got chatting to the owner, one of Ichenhausen's town councillors. He recognised me from theprevious evening's launch. I told him that I was descended from the Seligmanns and am researching family history. He very kindly told me that he would go back to his home and photocopy for me some chapters about the Jews in Ichenhausen in a book written by Heinrich Sinz before WW2. This he did. Heinrich Sinz was a Pastor in Ichenhausen who wrote much about its local history. I visited the Ichenhausen Cemetery (ie that for non-Jews). On the wall of the cemetery is a large War Memorial. The section for the 1914-18 war contains, as do many German WW1 memorials, the names of both the Christian and the Jewish dead. Unusually the 1939-45 section of this memorial includes without making any distinction the names of all the citizens of Ichenhausen who perished during this period: soldiers, Jews and other civilians.
We returned to Ulm by car, kindly driven by Moritz Schmid's daughter. From Ulm to Friedrichshafen Airport, again passing Laupheim, by train. We flew back to London without much delay.
For illustrations click here.
For practical information click HERE
