22nd November 1938
In Potsdam, as in other towns, the synagogue on Wilhemsplatz has been badly damaged. Because the synagogue building, which stands on one of the most outstanding squares in Potsdam, is immediately surrounded on one side by the main post office and on the other by a residential house, they did not burn the synagogue down as has been done in other towns. Consequently the interior of the synagogue was heavily damaged using machinery. At the house adjacent to the synagogue, where the cantor lives with his family, stones were flung through the windows, so that those living in the house barely managed to reach safety.
The official opening of the now ruined synagogue was celebrated in 1903. It stands on the same spot where Frederick the Great in his day had had a synagogue built for the Jewish people of Potsdam. In the new synagogue there was also a Prussian eagle with sword and sceptre as a symbol for that building.
Even the funeral chapel at the Jewish cemetery at Pfingsberg was destroyed and the cemetery itself closed. The graves themselves do not appear to have been damaged.
Originally all the male members of the Jewish community of Potsdam were arrested. Even the eldest, amongst them men of over 70 years of age, although they were later released. Still under arrest are, amongst others, Rabbi Dr. Hermann Schreiber, likewise his son Dr. Paul Schreiber who until his arrest was a teacher at a Jewish school in Berlin, in addition the first chairman of the Jewish community, lawyer Dr. Marcuse. Also arrested was Dr. Fritz Hirschberg, the well-known Berlin physician and successor to Professor Dr. Boas, who has been living with his mother in Potsdam after giving up his practice.
Most of those arrested, amongst them Rabbi Dr. Schreiber, are in the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen.
A children’s home in Caputh near Potsdam was also violently closed. It appears that the children accommodated in this home barely managed to save their lives as, according to a reliable report, a 15-year-old boy saved the life of the one-year-old child of a teacher.
