The community center of the Jewish community umbrella
organisation was opened in 1959. It is the seat of the Directory Board of
the Jewish community and also houses the Jewish adult education center
which organizes lectures, workshops, concerts and other cultural events as
well as the Jewish Community Library
and the kosher restaurant "Arche Noah".
On the right side of the entrance, a memorial wall shows the
names of most of the concentrations camps and ghettos to which 58,000 Jews
were deported from Berlin. In the late eighties, a Torah scroll sculpture
was erected in the courtyard. "There shall be one law for you and the
stranger among you" (Numbers 15, 16) is inscribed on the top. There is
also a plaque commemorating
Recha Freier, the founder of the Youth Aliyah Movement. She
rescued the lives of several thousand children by bringing them to
Palestine.
Originally, a beautiful synagogue in moorish style was
inaugurated at that site in 1912, because the Jewish population of
Charlottenburg had increased from 4,678 in 1885 to 22,580 in 1910. At the
turn of the century, it was all the fashion to shift to the "New West" as
Charlottenburg was then called, but only for those who could afford it.
When Leo Baeck
came to Berlin in 1912, he began officiating at that synagogue. It was
gutted by fire during the pogrom of 9th
November 1938, expropriated in 1939 and further destroyed by
bombs. In the fifties the ruin was demolished.
After 1945, most Jewish survivors in Berlin - about one thousand
- intended to leave Germany as soon as possible. The new post-war Jewish
communities were seen as "in transition". During the first years after
liberation, many Jews came from Eastern Europe because of progroms in
their own countries. The majority left Germany, but a minority and a
smaller number of Jews who had lived in Germany before the Nazi period
started to organize Jewish community life with
religious services, social support, a kindergarten and
other activities.
