Synagogue square

Until November 1938, the synagogue of the Jewish community of Breisach stood on this site. Built in 1804, the building with an attached mikvah replaced an earlier synagogue from 1710, which had been destroyed in a town fire in 1793. The Jewish community experienced its heyday in the mid-19th century. Breisach was the seat of the district rabbinate.

Behind the synagogue was the Jewish cemetery, which was established in 1757. Later, a new cemetery was built on the Isenberg.

In the early morning of November 10, 1938 (Pogrom Days), the synagogue was vandalized by local National Socialists, set on fire, and subsequently demolished. The religious and communal life of the remaining Jewish community then shifted to the nearby community center, today the Blue House Memorial, where a secret prayer room existed until the deportation of the Jews of Baden in October 1940.

On the initiative of Walter Breisacher, a native of Breisach, a memorial was erected 1958 here on the square. The current memorial was redesigned in 1998: the outline of the synagogue is traced on the ground. The memorial shows a symbolic Torah shrine with Torah scrolls and tablets of the law. A menorah is embedded in the pavement.