On Monday, October 21, a moving memorial service was held in Frankfurt's St. Paul's Church to mark the 83rd anniversary of the first mass deportation of Jews from Frankfurt. The event recalled the dramatic events of October 19, 1941, when over 1,100 people from Frankfurt were torn from their homes by SA men and deported to the Lodz ghetto under the most adverse conditions.
Prof. Andrea Löw, Deputy Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute of Contemporary History Munich-Berlin, impressively described the horrors of that time in her speech. "Exactly 83 years ago, early in the morning, armed SA men broke into the homes of Jews. They had to be ready to leave within two hours. Completely terrified and not knowing what to do next," she reported.
Mayor Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg emphasized the special significance of the event in her welcoming address: "Especially at this time, when anti-Semitism is becoming more noticeable again, we must not stand idly by. We must stand up for our constitutional state and our free country with all our might." She recalled the responsibility that society bears today for remembering and standing up against all forms of hatred.
The commemorative events, which have been organized by the city's Department of Culture and the Fritz Bauer Institute since 2018, have their origins in civic engagement. They commemorate the victims of the deportation, which was organized by the Frankfurt city administration, the SA, the Gauleitung and the Gestapo. Only three people survived this deportation.
To conclude her speech, Prof. Löw quoted from the notes of Oskar Rosenfeld, a deportee who was later murdered in Auschwitz and who wrote in the Lodz ghetto: "Many horrors were forgotten. Many horrors had no witnesses. Many horrors were such that their account was not believed. But they should remain alive in our memories."
The commemorative hour in St. Paul's Church was an impressive appeal to never forget the horrors of the past and to resist the resurgence of anti-Semitism.
