74 - Guest post - Strasbourg - the Synagogue on the Quai Kleber

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 I was walking around Strasbourg visiting churches and I came across the commemorative monument which is sited in the place where the Strasbourg Synagogue stood before the Nazis destroyed it.

My churches blog is generally interested in looking at the history contained in Christian churches, and their artistic treasures or curiosities. I don’t often include synagogues or mosques because they are less theatrical, and there are fewer of them in the places I visit. But the Strasbourg Synagogue is such a symbol of the horrors of nazism, of an attempted genocide of a very well integrated community, using unheard of violence, that I thought I would include it in. My comments of course cannot be as cheery and chirpy as they usually are.


The synagogue was burned down by the Hitler Youth in 1940, and demolished the following year. It had been built at the very end of the 19th century. A new synagogue replaced it, on another site, in 1958, and the commemorative installation was set up in 1976.

















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