In this tiny village northeast of Stuttgart , the synagogue, built in 1851, was part of a large complex containing a Jewish school and residences and was, thus, not destroyed on Kristallnacht. The prayer hall was wrecked, however, and restored in the 1980’s as a museum and memorial. A permanent exhibit on “The History of the Jews of the Lowlands” is installed in the one-time schoolroom and teacher’s apartment, and the former prayer hall houses an exhibit on “Religious Life in Judaism.”

The mikveh that lies beneath the City Hall of this attractive town is one of the earliest discovered in Germany – dating from before 1350. Andernach is the official “Sister City” of the Israeli Negev city of Dimona.

Recently restored to its 1917 Moorish and Art Nouveau splendor, the Augsburg Synagogue and Jewish Culture Museum now functions as a cultural center and meeting point for the small Jewish community and the wider public. Opened in 1985, it has been updated and its new permanent exhibition represents more comprehensively the history of Jewish culture in the region from the late-Middle Ages to the present day.

There is a small Jewish community in this spa town, 23 miles from Frankfurt . The Bauhaus-style Bad Nauheim Synagogue was built in 1929 and survived the Nazis. There is also a Jewish cemetery with a beautiful chapel.

Famous for its cathedral and its eclectic Town Hall, Bamberg has had a Jewish community for most of its history. Bamberg has a modern Jewish Community Center whose wood-paneled Synagogue has colorful stained-glass windows. Bamberg’s Holocaust Monument recalls the synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht and to those who died. It stands at Synagogenplatz. In the Bamberg Historical Museum visitors can see a scale model of the gorgeous wooden synagogue from the Franconian village of Horb.

Jews have lived in Bayreuth since the Middle Ages and despite its modern-day persona as a „shrine“ to composer, Richard Wagner, the Jewish community of Bayreuth was never affected by the outspoken anti-Semitism of the composer or his circle. The Bayreuth synagogue, dating from 1760, was ransacked on Kristallnacht, but a new community was established after World War II.

Bergen-Belsen was the second concentration camp on German soil liberated by the Allies. 27,000 inmates had died in the six weeks before the British arrived and so appalling were conditions that thousands continued to die in the ensuing weeks; among them a girl named Anne Frank. It was initially an army training base, then a prisoner-of-war camp. It became a death camp when, in the final months of the war, its population, disease and death rate soared. There are several memorials at Bergen-Belsen.

In 1705, the Jewish Community of Bielefeld was founded. After the premises of the first synagogue became too small for the growing community, a new synagogue was built 1905; it was torched on Kristallnacht. Today, a Synagogue Memorial marks the site. The fire was filmed by an amateur film-maker and is one of the few movies recording the events of Kristallnacht. Today’s Bielefeld synagogue, Beit Tikwa, was opened in 2008.