History of the Jews in Alsace

It was first attested to in 1165 by Benjamin of Tudela, who wrote about a "large number of learned men" in "Astransbourg";[1] and it is assumed that it dates back to around the year 1000.

[2] Although Jewish life in Alsace was often disrupted by outbreaks of pogroms, at least during the Middle Ages, and reined in by harsh restrictions on business and movement, it has had a continuous existence ever since it was first recorded.

[9] Jews were subsequently forbidden to settle in the town and were reminded every evening at 10 o'clock by a Cathedral bell and a municipal herald blowing the "Grüselhorn" to leave.

In the 18th century, Herz Cerfbeer of Medelsheim, the influential merchant and philanthropist, became the first Jew to be allowed to settle in the Alsatian capital again.

In 1777, a local judge forged hundreds of receipts, which he gave to Catholic peasants, to "prove" they had repaid their debts to Jewish moneylenders.

However, local antisemitism also increased, and Napoleon turned hostile in 1806, imposing a moratorium on repaying all debts owed to Jews.

In the 1830–1870 era, urban middle-class Jews made enormous progress toward integration and acculturation, as antisemitism sharply declined.

By 1831, the state began paying salaries to official rabbis, and in 1846 a special oath required for Jews in court was discontinued.

During this era before 1870 many Jews converted to Christianity, including David Paul Drach (1823), Francis Libermann (1826) and Alphonse Ratisbonne (1842).

Alfred Dreyfus was by birth a citizen of Mulhouse and thus suspected by French conservatives of innate sympathy with the German enemy by virtue of his being Alsatian and Jewish, which put him under suspicion of being doubly disloyal.

One of the alleged traitor's strongest advocates was fellow Mulhousian Auguste Scheurer-Kestner, a (non-Jewish) chemist, industrialist, politician and philanthropist.

August Hirt became an institute director at the Nazi University of Strasbourg; he is notorious for his experiments with concentration camp prisoners and for his efforts to establish a Jewish skull collection.

[25] The annual European Day of Jewish Culture was initiated in 1996 by the B'nai Brith of Bas-Rhin together with the local Agency for Development of Tourism.

[27] The original aim of the day was to permit access to, and ultimately encourage restoration of, long-abandoned synagogues of architectural value such as those in Wolfisheim, Westhoffen, Pfaffenhoffen, Struth, Diemeringen, Ingwiller and Mackenheim.