The Virtual Historian

Desecration:
To fulfill their destructive will, the Nazis chose to attack Jewish religious symbols, despite the fact that their racial anti-Semitism did not centre around Jewish religious practices and beliefs. The desecration of synagogues and the elimination of objects of worship, however, were some of the weightiest of all the immense destructions of the Holocaust. In Germany, synagogues were burned during the "Kristallnacht." Any furniture not destroyed by fire was systematically looted, and objects of worship were stolen. From that moment on, old Jewish works were collected by the Hohe Schule (“high school,” a college) in Frankfurt, created by Alfred Rosenberg, an institution that provided the "study" of Jewish religion and history for Nazi training. The looting of ancient works with Jewish themes was progressively extended to the whole of Europe and carried out by the ERR (the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the Nazi organization responsible for the appropriation of cultural productions during WWII). Several major Jewish libraries with a wealth of religious books were pillaged, such as the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Paris, or the Rosenthaliana in Amsterdam. As German troops entered Poland and continued further East, synagogues were desecrated and looted. Rabbis and religious Jews – more easily recognizable due to their distinctive religious garb – were prime targets for public humiliation. Objects of Jewish worship were frequently perverted to humiliate their worshippers: prayer shawls were used as underwear, Torah scrolls were dismembered, and the leather from tefillin (phylacteries) was repurposed for making boots. In Prague, the Museum of the Maisel Synagogue consists of objects of worship looted from all over Central Europe. This collection has been preserved until today, although the dubious origin of the goods has not always been recognized. After the liquidation of the ghettos, the remaining synagogues – like the Great Synagogue of Tlomatka Street in Warsaw – were demolished. Cemeteries were destroyed, including those on Oranienburg Street in central Berlin and in Salonika in Greece. Other desecrations occurred at the end of the war. When there was a shortage of fuel to burn the bodies of the prisoners of concentration camps, they were buried in a common grave in the nearest Jewish cemetery; this was the case in the southwest of Germany for the Kommandos of the Struthof concentration camp.