The Jewish Museum in the Cloister of St Aegidien Church

The Cloister well.

This tranquil corner of St Aegidien Church shows part of the medieval cloister  which houses the city's Jewish Museum.  The idea for a museum was first mooted in the 1920's, when Karl Steinacker was the director of  the  "Volksmuseum"  in Braunschweig, that  had been  founded in 1891 by his father.  The museum began collecting various articles connected to the Jewish faith, and also organised the rescue of the synagogue in Hornburg,  a small town south of Braunschweig,  that had been unused since 1882  and was becoming derelict.  With the help of donations from interested parties, enough money was raised to remove the most important structures from the synagogue, and store them in the Volksmuseum until a suitable place could be found to display them.  

During Hitler's purge of the jewish population of Braunschweig,  this collection of artefacts managed to survive unscathed hidden away in the museum,  and there it remained until 1987, when a new home was found in the Cloister.  The old synagogue in Braunschweig was destroyed by the Nazis on the night of November 9th/10th 1938.  

Below you can see the reconstructed synagogue, surrounded by a display of important objects connected to the jewish faith, and a history of the jewish population in Braunschwig from the earliest  foundation of the city to their subsequent  forceable removal to concentration camps in the 1930/1940's.

The rebuilt synagogue. 

The staircase seen right, leads visitors up to a gallery with photos and objects from the last war.  Photos of concentration camps are not easy to stomach at the best of times, and for the first time I saw on display the small, six armed star with "Jude" written across it, that all jews were forced to wear for identification.   There was a  sub-camp in Braunschweig,  were those prisoners capable of working, were bought from Bergen-Belsen to work in the Buessing wagon making works in Schillstrasse.   A small study centre now marks this spot, which I have visited only once, and found it a difficult place in which to  sit and be surrounded by the echoes of a terrible past.

Silver objects of faith.