Nadene Goldfoot
The Rhineland is named for the Rhine River, The Rhine is the second-longest river in Central and Western Europe (after the Danube), at about 1,230 km (760 mi).
Rhine River starting in Switzerland. The Rhine and the Danube comprised much of the Roman Empire's northern inland boundary, and the Rhine has been a vital navigable waterway bringing trade and goods deep inland since those days. The various castles and defenses built along it attest to its prominence as a waterway in the Holy Roman Empire. Among the largest and most important cities on the Rhine are Cologne, Rotterdam, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Strasbourg, Arnhem, and Basel.
Basel/Basle is on the map and is in Switzerland had a Jewish community from the 12th century on, suffered the most in the Black Death massacres when the whole community was martyred by burning on an island in the Rhine on January 16, 1349. The Black Death Epidemic hit Germany particularly hard in 1348-1349. Jews were blamed, the people who were the cleanest of all as cleanliness was part of their religion, washing hands before eating, women going to the mikvah once a month, men possibly weekly, and many other rules pertaining to cleanliness. But Jews were a minority, as were easy to blame most things for. A rumor started in Savoy that Jews had poisoned the wells. Jewish communities from Alsace eastward were attacked. People who owed money to Jews who lent it to them were happy to see the Jews killed.
Cologne, the large trading center, on the map, had an organized Jewish community there in 321 CE of which Emperor Constantine issued regulations concerning the rabbis and elders there. Other Jews must have been living along the Rhineland at the same time.
Speyer (Spire) on the map, was a Jewish community from 1070 CE when Jews were into commerce under the protection of Bishop Rodiger. He considered these Jews as valuable subjects and invited refugees from Mayence (Mainz) to settle there.
Worms, not shown but most well-known, was a city the Jews settled in the 10th century, well established by the 11th. Emperor Henry IV had received financial assistance from Jews and rewarded them with privileges in 1074 and 1090 by granting them freedom of commerce, security of property, and imperial protection. The community was annihilated in the 1st Crusade of 1090. In 1096 was the massacre where 1,000 Jews were slaughtered at the hands of crusaders under Count Emicho in May 1096 of which 800 came from Worms.. Returnees and their descendants were killed in the Black Death outbreaks of 1349.
A legend relates that the Jews of Worms were descended from the Benjamites who had migrated from Palestine to Germany .
Koblenz, on the map, was a city where my uncle, Werner Oster's grandparents died. Jews are first mentioned in a customs toll of 1104; an individual Jew, Vives of Koblenz, is noted as living in Cologne about 1135; the community is mentioned in *Benjamin of Tudela's Itinerary (c. 1172). Jews had to pay higher taxes than other people. A 1209 toll register set a discriminatory fee for Jews but the Mainz Nuremberg *Memorbuch credits "Isaac and his wife Bela" with its removal. The Jew Suesskind granted a loan against the security of a mortgage on a house to Archbishop Theodore of *Trier, which the latter had redeemed by 1238. In 1265 Archbishop Henry granted the Jews a privilege of protection, yet on April 2, 1265, some 20 Jews were slain. A father who had martyred his wife and four sons but was himself saved from committing suicide by gentiles asked *Meir of Rothenburg if he had to do penance and was given a lenient reply, referring to earlier such events.
Archbishop Henry's peace treaty with the city, signed in 1285, after a revolt, stipulated that violation of Jewish life and property should be punished. In 1307 the Jewish community (universitas Judeorum), headed by a magistrate, received the rights of joint citizenship from the municipality. Jewish houses and properties are mentioned in sources dating from 1275 to 1333, the Jews' gate in 1282, the cemetery in 1303, and the nursing home in 1356.
Werner Oster's grandparents were in Koblenz , dying there in the 1930s and 40s. In 1808, 342 Jews lived in Koblenz; the number fell to 242 in 1836, but rose to 400 in 1849, 558 in 1880, 709 (1.8% of the total population) in 1925, 800 in 1929, and dropped to 669 in 1933; in May 1939 there were only 308. May 1939 is when he was finally able to leave and took a ship to the US.
Life in Koblenz has changed a lot since WWII. They now have sister cities in USA and Israel.
Austin, United States (1992)
Petah Tikva, Israel (2000)- Aerial image of the mouth of the Rhine into Lake Constance
of Germany, Switzerland and Austria, area of 209 square miles
"The section of the Rhine between Basel and Mainz is more of a meeting place than a border line. Jewish communities on both banks of the river have always been close, as demonstrated by their unique history and rich heritage.
During the Middle Ages, Jews arrived in Mainz, then an important trading city between Europe and Asia. Distinguished members of the Mainz community included the prominent rabbi Gershom Meor Hagolah and the Kalonymos family, originally from Lucca in Italy, whose great scholarship includes some of Europe’s oldest rabbinical texts.
The Jewish community of Worms, founded soon after that of Mainz, has preserved an extraordinary medieval cemetery and a reconstructed synagogue where the famous Talmudist Rashi of Troyes studied.
Starting in the 11th century, Jews gradually settled in cities near the Rhine. Community presence is documented in Speyer around 1080 (ritual bath, medieval synagogue, museum) and around 1150 in Strasbourg (ritual bath, museums) and Frankfurt (cemetery, synagogue, museum), as well as in Basel, Freiburg, and many other cities. Despite periods of bloody persecution, in particular linked to the Crusades (1095, 1146) and the Armleder revolt (1338), the Rhineland Jews left numerous testimonies of their endurance and their creativity: material traces (synagogues, cemeteries, ritual baths) and immaterial traces (books, rabbinical treatises, the Western Yiddish language, etc)." European Jews' language, Yiddish, was basically a combination of Hebrew and German.
Resource:
https://jguideeurope.org/en/region/germany/the-rhineland-and-bavaria/
https://jewisheritage.org/the-european-route-of-judaism-on-the-rhineland
https://hmh.mwmdigital.com/community/12/
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms_massacre_(1096)
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/travel/tracing-jewish-history-along-the-rhine.html
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