“Ermershausen”
Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities:
Germany volume 1
(Germany)

50°13' / 10°37'

Translation from Pinkas ha-kehilot Germanyah

Published by Yad Vashem

Published in Jerusalem, 1972

 

Acknowledgments

Project Coordinator and Translator

Elizabeth Levy

 

Our sincere appreciation to Yad Vashem for permission
to put this material on the JewishGen web site.

This is a translation from: Pinkas Hakehillot: Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities, Germany
Volume 1, pages 405-407, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1972

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[Pages 405-407]

Ermershausen, Germany

Village in the Hoffheim i. Ufranken county

Population:

Year No of Residents of them Jews %
1814 441 111 25.2%
1867 588 101 17.2
1871 560 85 15.2
1890 640 113 17.7
1900 598 104 17.4
1910 575 70 12.2
1925 543 67 12.3
1933 583 58 10.0
7.3.1937 --   49
17.5.1939 553 33 6.0
7.2.1942     18
23.4.1942     3
9.6.1942     0

 

Religious classification in Percentages in 1933:

Jews Catholics Protestants
10 2.5 87.5

It is known that in Ermershausen there was an organized community in the second half of the 18th century. The community registry remains from 1769, which opens with the principles of the establishment of the community. The last entry in the registry was in 1927.

Under Nazi rule (1933-1938)

In 1933, the Ermershausen community was under the district Rabbinate of Burgpreppach and under its authority were a synagogue (established in the first half of the 18th century), a one-room school house, a mikveh and a cemetery (beginning in 1832) in which the neighboring community of Maroldsweisach also buried its dead. A women's burial society (Hevrah Kadisha) also operated in the community. The community budget (in 1930) was 1,968 Marks. In the school year 1932/33, religious classes were offered to 13 children.

The teacher, Herman Mahlermann, who was also the community Chazan, was arrested, together with a number of other Jews from neighboring communities, in the spring of 1934, for a blood libel made up by the Gestapo (see Burgpreppach). After Mahlermann was released, taking several months, he moved to become the teacher in the nearby Hammerlburg community. During that same year another teacher, Herbert Adler, took over his position as teacher in Ermershausen. Adler emigrated a week before the November 1938 riots.

The majority of Jews in Ermershausen made a living from the sale of livestock. While the scope of their business declined a great deal after the Nazis came to power, they were still making a living then since they had fields that they worked. Also, their relationship with the local farmers remained good, different from the situation in other villages in the area.

From 1934 until November 10, 1938, only 10 Jews left Ermershausen.

Process of the Destruction of the Community

Year Left Emigrated Deported
1934 1 1  
1935 2 1  
1937   4  
1938   8  
1939 9 8  
1940   1  
1941 1 2  
25.4.1942*     15
23.9.1942     2
Total 13 25 17

*See below.

The Holocaust

In the riots on the night of November 10, 1938, most of the Jewish males in Ermershausen were arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. Correspondingly the furniture and objects belonging to the synagogue were damaged and the ritual articles were destroyed. The local Jews were forced by the rioters to burn the fields outside the village and their Torahs with their own hands.

Of the 38 Jews of Ermershausen who left between the years 1934-1941, 25 of them emigrated to the US and the rest moved to other cities in Germany, of them seven to Wuerzburg and two to Berlin.

On April 22, 1942, 15 of the remaining 18 Jews of Ermershausen were sent to Wuerzburg and deported from there to Izbica near Lublin on the 25th. On July 8th of that same year, the last three Jews of Ermsershausen were sent to an old age home in Schweinfurt, and on September 23rd two of them were deported via Wuerzburg to Ghetto Theresienstadt. The fate of the third is unknown.

After the war not one Jew returned to Ermershausen. The synagogue building remains and the Jewish cemetery exists and is under the care of the National Union of Jewish Communities in Bavaria. There are no Jews in Ermershausen today.

The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People

F/VIII/8 (3-4). – G/5/791. – Inv/250:33; 486/ 3:48. – S/225.

Yad Vashem

E/4-3-10. E/4-3-12 (testimony of Rabbi Shaul Monk). JRSO/Bayern, p. 7 (Ermershausen). –PKG/Q315; 412. – PKG/S.3/Ermershausen/1961.

Microfilms

BD/23-Gestapo, r. 3, f.11, p. 14; f. 13, pp. 88-89; r. 4, f. 13a, pp. 203-4. – JM/2709, r. 1:522; r. 2: 595-97, 846, 920, 931, 1077-78; r. 3:1069-70, 1097-98, 1261, 1287, 1315-16, 1343, 1370-71, 1529. – JM/2864:2334.

Bibliography

(Hebrew) Segri, Haim Israel Rafael: Emissary records. Manuscript from the Rabbi's Beit HaMidrash , New York, 13273. (This record, as it appears in Hebrew, is difficult to translate.)

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