You might recall I posted a few weeks ago about the discoveries I made on the Internet regarding my mom's father and grandfather and their depatures from Germany in the 1930s.  Anyhow, I finally made the trip to Speyer this past Sunday and it was absolutely remarkable.  The courtesy of the two gentlemen who met me and guided me through town was indescribable.  The Protestant journalist from the local paper who covers much of the past and present of the once thriving Jewish population in Speyer could not have been more helpful, and Johannes Bruno, the 80 year-old Roman Catholica professor who moved from Rome to Speyer 45 years ago had more knowledge about the history of the region than perhaps anyone who lived there.  

I met both of these men near my great-grandfather's former shoe factory which is where they also made the family home.  I posted a picture I found on the Internet of it in my original post (with my great-grandfather standing in front).  It is now a cafe with apartments on top of it.  They arranged for me go all throughout the building, including the common areas of the apartment complex which was the foyer of my great-grandfather's old home.  I'd be lying if I didn't say it was surreal.

After visiting the home and pausing for coffee, we next visited the newly built synagogue in town.  Speyer was once home to a thriving Jewish population and in fact, that region is where the term "ashkenazi" comes from, and also is the ancestral home for the origins of Yiddish.  After WWII there obviously was no Jewish population to speak of, with those who survived never returning, but over the past years, Jews from Russia and the former Soviet Republics have relocated there  The population has swelled once more to a point where it was worthwhile to have a formal synagogue, which was beautiful.  

Our final stop on the tour was to Judenhof, which was the Jewish courtyard.  There we toured the remains of the original synagogue built in 1104 (burned down in 1698), as well as the mikvah (Jewish ritual bath), which was also built in 1104 and never destroyed so it remains much the same it was then.  This was awe inspiring, it really was.  

As I said when I first posted about this, the Internet can be an incredible place.  My family has always known bits and pieces about my grandfather's escape from Germany (leaving Speyer against his parents's wishes when Hitler became Chancellor) and eventually making it to the U.S. after surviving part of the Franco Revolution in Madrid, as well as the history of his parents who were incarcerated in Dachau shortly after Kristalnacht, only to buy their freedom and be sent to Bogota, Colombia.  We never had pictures of their home in Speyer until I found that one on the Internet, nor did we know much of the backstory until I read the works of Johannes Bruno (the aforementioned Italian professor) who had thoroughly research my family and so many others from the Middle Ages forward.  As an aside, Johannes Bruno certainly seems like an odd choice to be the chief archivist of Jewish history from an area of central Germany.  Born in Italy and raised Catholic, he told me that this ultimately became his life's passion in large part because of his mother, who helped hide from the Nazis during WWII.  A remarkable man for whom I am forever grateful.  

Below are some pictures from my tour, as well as a picture of Johannes Bruno from the newspaper.

The family home in the 1930s

The family home today (the central door that is open is the one in the picture above, the door to the right is the entrance to the home)

Inside the foyer of the family home

The ruins of the original synagogue

The new synagogue

The old mikvah

Johannes Bruno