Six-hundred and fifty Jews all of whom were carried to non-Jews-are all that remain of the 20,000 who formerly lived in Hamburg, Max Heineman, director of the Jewish Self-Aid Committee, today told a Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent. It is expected that 500 of the last transport of Jews sent from here to Theresienstadt will return, Heineman said.
The military government authorities have returned the Jewish community’s office and house, which had previously been occupied by the Gestapo. Heineman is requesting the return of two old peoples homes and an institution for the disabled, the only Jewish building which were not damaged by Allied bombings. Thus far, he said, nothing has been done to return the property of individual Jews which was seized by the Nazis.
All synagogues in Hamburg were totally destroyed in 1938, with the exception of the new temple on Oberstrasse, the exterior of which remained. The Nazis moved newspaper printing presses into the building and they are still there.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.