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Encounters

Visits by former Jews in Tübingen

Encounters with former Tübingen Jews and their descendants.

In 1981, the university city of Tübingen invited its former Jewish citizens to visit Tübingen for the first time. The then head of the cultural office Dr. Wilfried Setzler and the former Mayor Dr. Eugen Schmid had initiated the visit. It was not an easy undertaking, because of the approximately 100 Jewish inhabitants of the city of Tübingen in 1933, 23 people were murdered in the death camps; about 80 people were forced to flee and abandon their professions, and arrived destitute at emigration countries.

Could the first invitation from the city of Tübingen enable a reconciliation? Hanna Bernheim née Bach (1895-1990) wrote to the mayor before the 1981 visit: "You will understand that the old bond is inextricably linked to painful memories.... But I hope that the majority of the younger generation will be ready and will help to heal the deep wounds and prevent such barbarism from repeating itself." (Quoted from: Benigna Schönhagen & Winfried Setzler, Jüdisches Tübingen, Schauplätze und Spuren, Tübingen 1999, p. 7).

During the second visit in 1987, the History Workshop Tübingen e.V. was involved. They conducted interviews with some of the visitors and invited them to discussions. That was the beginning not only of decades of preoccupation with the history of the Tübingen Jews and National Socialism, but also of many friendly relationships with some families and their descendants, which continue to this day.


Further invitations from the university city of Tübingen followed: 1995 to the publication of Destroyed Hopes .Ways of the Tübingen Jews published by the History Workshop Tübingen and also 2004 to the premiere of the documentary produced by the history workshop, called Ways of the Tübingen Jews. A search for traces.In 2018 the city invited the two families Bernheim/Doctor and Marque to the 80th Anniversary of the November pogrom of 1938, in order to talk to the second and third generations. Between the larger invitations, there were a number of smaller ones, most recently in 2019 the visit of Martin and Ari Silbermann, descendants of the Hirsch family.

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