Jewish Life
Jewish Life in DREI AM MAIN
Really early in its history, Miltenberg had a Jewish community which was large enough to maintain its own synagogue and mikvah. For centuries, the Jewish chronicles show a persistent range of going back and forth from being welcome, respected citizens to being persecuted scapegoats.
In the 20th century, the gruesome efficiency of the National Socialists’ extermination machinery led to the sad fact that since then there has not been a Jewish community in Miltenberg.
Stolpersteine
Throughout the years 2016, 2017, and 2018, a total of 44 Stolpersteine (lit. Stumbling Stones) were laid to commemorate the Jewish and their descending fellow citizens who had been deported and murdered or driven to death by the Nazis. A more detailed description of the project and names, plus biographies of the victims (in German only), can be found here.
DenkOrt Deportationen 1941 – 1944 (Deportation Memorial Site)
Since 2020 there has been an additional, decentralized memorial site in Lower Franconia for all the victims of National Socialism:
In Wurzburg, in front of the central railway station, and at the Aumühle, you can find the most various items of luggage: suitcases, rolled-up blankets, backpacks, and similar things made from stone, metal, wood, or other materials. They symbolize the few belongings people were able to take with them when being deported.
The exact counterpart of each one of these items is displayed in every town from where people were deported. In Miltenberg, you can find a suitcase made from red sandstone, and in Kleinheubach a rolled-up blanket, also made from red sandstone. A more detailed description of this project can be found here.
The Medieval Mikvah
The mikvah (Jewish bath) in the Löwengasse is right in the centre of the Schwarzviertel. It is a tall, slim, four-storey building with decorative framework, created in the 16th century.
Mikvah is Hebrew for „collection of water“, however, the word is mainly used for a bath serving the purpose of ritual immersion in Judaism.
The water must fulfil certain requirements: It has to be flowing water and it must not have been collected in a vessel or by a pump.
In 1910 a mikvah was installed at the new synagogue in the Mainstraße, so this one has fallen into disuse ever since. In 1938 the authorities demanded the “removal” of the bath, so it was filled with rubble.
Today the mikvah is private property. Its owners removed more than 2500 buckets filled with soil and mud during the renovation between 2002 and 2004, thereby opening the bath again. The soil was filtered for historic finds.
The statue of Saint Elizabeth was placed there in 2024.
Sehenswürdigkeiten mit Bezug zur Jüdischen Kultur
Sie finden in Miltenberg und Kleinheubach eine ganze Reihe von Sehenswürdigkeiten, die einen Bezug zu den jüdischen Gemeinden dieser Ortschaften haben.
