The East German municipal authorities in Dessau are preparing to tear down the house, slightly damaged in an air raid during the last war, in whose annex philosopher Moses Mendelssohn was born in 1729. The “father of Jewish emancipation” and the first Jew to translate the Bible into German Mendelssohn was commonly known as “Moses Dessau” when he came to Berlin as a young man.
A monument to Mendelssohn used to stand outside the Dessau railroad station, but the Nazis carted it away to the local Jewish cemetery after their advent to power and demolished it during the November pogroms of 1938. At the house on whose grounds Mendelssohn was born there is at present a memorial plaque.
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.
