West Germans Observe Memorial Day for Jews Executed by Nazis; Public Meetings Held

The tragic fate of the Jews under the Nazi regime was commemorated today throughout West Germany at memorial services and public meetings addressed by members of the German parliament. Christian Stock, Premier of the State of Hesse, called on all Germans to honor the memory of the annihilated Jews. West German President Theodor Heuss and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer were scheduled to address a mass meeting in the parliament building at Bonn.

A report from Frankfurt today said that Jewish religious and cultural leaders from several countries attended the dedication ceremony yesterday in Frankfurt of the synagogue there which was rebuilt from the wreckage left by a Nazi program in 1938. The choir of the Paris Jewish community came there specially for the occasion. During the four-hour ceremony, the synagogue’s Torah scrolls, confiscated by the Nazis but later recovered at different places in Germany, were brought back to the Holy Ark.

Speaking at the ceremony on behalf of the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, Robert H. Hanes, chief of the Economic Cooperation Mission to Germany, said; “The world cannot but admire your courage in starting out once again in your professions and your businesses. You are rebuilding not only your houses of worship but in many cases your very lives. Uncertainty faces all of us in the world today but the courage which you have shown will serve as a continuing inspiration to Jew and non-Jew alike. In re-establishing this house of God, and in retaking your place in Germany, you are assuming, voluntarily, certain obligations to make yourselves a real part of the community, to help in the moral, social and economic reconstruction. I sincerely hope that your example here today will encourage other communities to restore their houses of worship which are so essential in stabilizing a turbulent world.”