History of the Jews in Hannover
They constituted a minority within the city and adhered to their traditional, ritually prescribed ways of life (such as the Sabbath commandment and observance of dietary laws).
After anti-Jewish sermons by Protestant clergymen led to violent riots, the Hanover City Council banned trade between Christians and Jews in 1588.
However, ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Calenberg region were outraged that the Jews had once again built a synagogue on the "Neustadt vor Hannover".
The Protestant superintendent of Ronnenberg, Wichmann Schulrabe, to whose district the Neustadt vor Hannover belonged, finally complained in writing to the consistory in Wolfenbüttel on February 1, 1613.
For a short period of time - until 1814 - equal rights were granted to Jewish men in the French-ruled Kingdom of Westphalia.
Mainly active in commercial and financial professions, the Jewish minority existed on the fringes of society until the middle of the 19th century.
From 1864 to 1870, after the demolition of older buildings in Bergstraße (today Rote Reihe) in Calenberger Neustadt, the New Synagogue was built.
The building, designed by Edwin Oppler in the style of historicism, was a symbol of self-confidence and recognition of the Jews and had a style-defining effect on the construction of synagogues in the German Empire.
The years leading up to the National Socialists' "seizure of power" in 1933 brought a social rise of Jewry in bourgeois society.
But secularly oriented Jews, such as the KPD politicians Werner Scholem and Iwan Katz, also became involved in the Hanoverian labor movement.
At the same time, a new anti-Semitism developed in the form of anti-liberal and anti-democratic movements, which became state doctrine with the seizure of power in 1933.
Under city building councilor Karl Elkart there were aryanizations, plunder, expulsions, deportations and murder, which destroyed the Jewish community of Hanover.
[5] This was used by the National Socialists as a pretext for the long-planned November pogroms of 1938, which were staged as "spontaneous actions of popular anger."
At the end of 1941 and even before the Wannsee Conference in February 1942, many Jews living in Hanover were forceably taken to the designated collection camp, the Israelite Horticultural School in Ahlem.
From there, 1001 people were transported to the Fischerhof train station in Linden on December 15, 1941, and deported to the Riga ghetto after luggage checks and body searches.
In the present-day city area of Hanover, seven subcamps were established in 1943 and 1944 at the end of World War II, which were assigned to the Neuengamme concentration camp.
After World War II, Jews returning from the concentration camps were in need of medical help, assistance and counseling.
With the help of Jewish organizations and the government of the state of Lower Saxony, which was founded in 1946, it was possible to provide social support for the members.
After 1990, community life was considerably expanded, especially in the areas of youth, cultural, social and senior citizen work.
In 1997, it was a founding member of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany Austria and Switzerland and soon renamed itself the Liberal Jewish Community of Hanover.
