Chapter 6: The Next Day


This chapter of the virtual tour of the former Synagogue of Niederzissen, called “The Next Day”, will examine the time from Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 up until the persecution and extermination of the Jews of the Brohl valley. Contemporary witnesses, Gentiles born in Niederzissen, recount their experience in the the neighborly community of Jews and Gentiles in Niederzissen, as well as their stories of some individual Jewish inhabitants. Only very few Jews from the congregation managed to escape abroad in time. In 1942, the remaining Jewish inhabitants of Niederzissen and the surrounding areas are forced into “Jew houses”. 21 Jews from Bad Neuenahr, Sinzig and Heimersheim are brought to Niederzissen to those so-called “Jew houses” in order to get the cities “Jew free”. On July 24th, 1942, all of them are brought to a central transit camp in castle Brohleck, and eventually deported eastwards a few weeks later, on July 27th, 1942. None of them survives. A “Memorbuch” (German for “memory book”), created specifically for the revised permanent exhibition of the former Synagogue of Niederzissen, contains the names of all Jews from the Brohl valley who were murdered during the Nazi regime. The Memorbuch can also be accessed as part of the virtual museum of the former Synagogue.