Rubble from the main synagogue in Munich destroyed 85 years ago on the orders of Adolf Hitler has been found in a chance discovery in a river flowing through the city.
Columns from the building, which was razed in Nazi Germany in 1938, as well as a stone tablet etched with the Ten Commandments were discovered last Friday, according to the Münchner Merkur newspaper. “We never thought we would find anything from it,” Bernhard Purin, the head of Munich’s Jewish museum, told the BBC.
“Yesterday I saw [the remains] for the first time and it was one of the most moving moments in 30 years of working in Jewish museums, especially seeing the plaque of the Ten Commandments not seen since 1938,” Purin added.
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The synagogue was destroyed in June 1938 after Hitler deemed it an “eyesore.” Just five months later, Jewish businesses and other places of worship were targeted in a wave of violence across the country in the attacks now known as Kristallnacht or the “Night of Broken Glass.” Today, a department store stands on the site of the building.
Rubble from Munich’s synagogue, which had been one of the most significant landmarks in the city, is believed to have remained in the waters of the River Isar since the masonry was used to build a dam-like structure over a decade after the end of World War II.
The newly found tablet once stood above the Ark in which the Torah scrolls were kept on the eastern wall of the building. Purin said that less than a quarter of the tablet is missing and that the fragment is the most important find so far.
“I really didn’t expect fragments of the old main synagogue to survive, let alone see them. It’s all still very unreal,” Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Jewish Community in Munich and Upper Bavaria, told Münchner Merkur. “The cultural department had a strong assumption about the origin when I was informed about the find. When I saw the first photos, there was no longer any doubt in my mind: These stones are part of Munich's Jewish history.”
Dieter Reiter, the mayor of Munich, said the discovery was a simple “stroke of luck.” His deputy told German media that it was the city’s duty to ensure the ruins were kept safe and returned to the Jewish community.
