Alsfeld ruthless!Expulsion of the last Jewish woman

What a bureaucratic, cold official report, when one considers in retrospect the fate of the affected individuals and fellow citizens! At the end of an eight-year development, the final entry in a four-page “General Protocol” dated December 4, 1941, states: “Alsfeld is now free of Jews.” The background was the law of April 30, 1939, regarding tenancies with Jews. It was just one of 42 laws, decrees, and ordinances issued between 1933 and 1943 aimed at the systematic degradation of Judaism and the expulsion of Jews from Germany.

Following the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, the first Jewish families began to emigrate, predominantly to America and Palestine. At that time, the Jewish proportion of the population in Alsfeld was nearly four percent. Jewish shops and enterprises, Jewish merchants, doctors, and lawyers, as well as the participation of Jews in public life, had been a normal part of the city.

By the end of 1940, all departures except for two had been completed. Selma Rothschild, widow of the brush maker Joseph Rothschild (who was born in Angenrod), was the last Jewish resident living in the house at Amthof 2. In November 1941, she moved to Bad Nauheim. Following her deportation, she died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943. (NH)