Jewish families in Geseke, Germany

A memorial stone, shown in the photo above, marks the site of the former Synagogue in Geseke, which was on Alter Steinweg, just off the Hellweg. There were 10 Jewish families that lived on the Hellweg. The Synagogue was torn down, and since 1957, there has been a home for the retarded in that location.

A special display on the Jews of Geseke and the Holocaust was set up in the Dickmann House Museum in May 1995 on the occasion of the 50ieth anniversary of the end of World War II.

Included in the Jewish exhibit were pictures of Julius and Bertha Schild. They had 3 sons: Ludwig, Hugo and Fritz. Fritz Schild married Ilse Stein on February 27, 1938. Their descendent Gary Schild did research on the Jews of Geseke.

The display cards in the Museum were all written in German, so I might have missed something, but I didn't see any mention of Jews from Geseke who died in the concentration camps. I did see the official form which had been issued to a Jew from Geseke which remanded him to a "work camp" from which he returned after the war, still alive. On the form, the reason given for sending him to a work camp was that he was not eligible to serve in the German army since he was a Jew.

The small town of Salzkotten, ten kilometers east of Geseke, was formerly known as a Jewish enclave. On the night of November 9th and 10th in 1938, during the pogrom known as Kristallnacht, 17 Jews were arrested in Salzkotten and taken to the dungeon in the nearby Wewelsburg Castle where they were briefly imprisoned before being transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The last Jews to leave Geseke during World War II were Ferdinand and Ida Kronenberg who were deported to Theresienstadt on July 29, 1942 and later sent to Auschwitz where they perished.

Kronenberg Family - External link

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This page was created July 22, 2008