Neighbors 1938 “We were all Ladenburgers”

November 9, 1938, marked the start of the November Pogroms, when violent antisemitic demonstrations broke out across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. This exhibition will shed light on the events as exemplified within several Jewish families in Ladenburg, Germany. It gives a picture of the city’s residents and their relations to one another.

The exhibition was conceived by teachers and students at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien (Center for Jewish Studies, Heidelberg) and the University of Heidelberg in cooperation with the Lobdengau Museum. The project was based on the information compiled by the working group “Jüdische Geschichte” (‘Jewish History’) established in 1983 in Ladenburg. This exhibit discusses the fate of several Ladenburg families within the broader historical context. The research for this exhibit helped to situate the fate of several Ladenburg families in the greater context of history, including the family of Houston survivors Lea Krell Weems and Ruth Krell Steinfeld. Ladenburg was the childhood home of survivors Lea and Ruth who survived by being smuggled out of Gurs by the French resistance group Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants (Children’s Aid Society) at the age of 8 and 7, respectively.

Reasearch and Funding provided by Hochschule für Jüdische Studien (Center for Jewish Studies, Heidelberg and the Lobdengau Museum.