Synagogue - Berlin

The New Synagogue is one of seven synagogues in Berlin today, the majority were destroyed in the Kristallnacht, the Night of Crystal Glass. In October 1938, 15,000 Polish Jews living in Germany were expelled without any warning. They were taken by German soldiers straight to the border, and only allowed to pack one suitcase. On the night of November 9th, 1938, in a deliberate act of state terrorism, hundreds of synagogues across Germany were torched. Jewish shops and businesses wrecked and 35,000 Jewish men deported to concentration camps.

The reason this synagogue was not destroyed by fire on Kristallnacht is nothing short of a miracle. Find out why on our tour.

On November 9, 1988, 50 years after Kristallnacht the reconstruction began and the synagogue was officially reopened in May 1995, 50 years after the end of the war. It holds a very small (80 seats) egalitarian service, fitting for the synagogues history as the centre of Reform Judaism. There is a gallery, a community centre for immigrant Russian Jews as well as a not-strictly kosher Jewish restaurant next door. There are a few more traces of the Jewish history of Berlin just around the corner.