200 Jews Emerge from Cologne’s Ruins; All of City’s Symagogues Razed

Two-hundred Jews have emerged from the ruins of Cologne and appealed to the Allied Military Government for food cards, the correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was told today by AMG officials. Most of these are married to non-Jews, or are the cnildren of “mixed marriages”. Because they were in hiding for several months to avoid being shipped into the interior of Germany, they had been compelled to forego food cards.

One of them, Moritz Neihaus, took this correspondent on a tour of the ruined synagogues of the city. All of them had been burned by the Hazis and the Allied bombings finished the job. Part of the walls and the “mikvah” remain of the Orthodox synagogue and large talmud torah on Staparn Strasse. The largest Orthodox synagogue, on Glocken Strasse, is undistinguishable from the rest of the rubble. The walls of the grandioso Reform Synagogue on Rund Strasse are still intact, but the roof has caved in. The basement of the building had been used as an air-raid shelter for “Aryans.” Of the spiritual leaders of these synagogues, two – Rabbis Kober and Rosenthal – succeeded in escaping to the United States, While the third – Rabbi Stein – was deported to Poland.

There are a few other Jews in Cologne becides the 200 who have applied for food cards. Two were found among the 80 prisoners released from Gestapo headquarters and 12 foreign Jews have passed through the wooden barracks on the outside of Cologne which are being used as a corting place for displaced persons. These barracks, incidentally, had housed political prisoners and a number of “mischlings” who were captured in recent months.

In an old pile of. clothes in this camp were found ghostly remnants of the Jewish population of Cologne. Sgt. Henry Silberman of New York, who was cleaning up the barracks, came across a torah scroll and several black-and-white striped “tsitsoth.”