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23 March to 15 July 2012 Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in the 1920s

The »Ez Chaim« Talmud Torah School

Black-and-white photo of an elderly man with a table of books in the building’s entrance
Selling religious books in the entrance to Grenadierstrasse 31 (ca. 1928) © Eichwalde, Ernst-Thormann-Bildarchiv

Visitors to Almstadtstrasse in the Berlin district of Mitte will find little trace of the role played by the street in the 1920s. Called Grenadierstrasse at the time, it was the religious and cultural centre of the Jews who had immigrated from Poland/Galicia to Berlin. Most of the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe knew it was an ideal destination in the »new« foreign city.

There were nineteen prayer rooms and synagogue associations in Grenadierstrasse alone. Four of these prayer rooms were located in the building at no. 31: the Radomsker, the Stutziner, the Kalischer Shtibl and the Beit Midrasch Meradomsk (the last having opened in 1922). The same building was home to the »Ez Chaim« Talmud Torah School, founded in 1918.

Statement by the scholar Anne-Christin Saß

»There is nothing in present-day Almstadtstrasse in the trendy Berlin district of Mitte – no plaque or memorial – to let visitors know that Grenadierstrasse was once the main thoroughfare in Berlin for Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. To me, the emptiness of this place most vividly illustrates the violent end of the history of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to Berlin.«

Anne-Christin Saß is a member of the project »Charlottengrad and Scheunenviertel« at the Free University of Berlin.

In the prayer rooms in Grenadierstrasse, Orthodox immigrants met to pray according to the traditions of their native countries. The Talmud Torah School, located on the second floor of the building at no. 31, offered Jewish children lessons in Hebrew and religion, prepared male youths for advanced Torah study, and provided poor school children with food, clothes and other forms of support.

»Talmud Torah« was one of largest associations in the Scheunenviertel. It had nearly 500 members and in 1925 a total of 130 students took lessons there. In the early 1920s the association bought the building in Grenadierstrasse – a sign of the future it saw for itself and its members in Berlin.

Black-and-white photo of a building facade with Hebrew signs and baskets in front of the door
Fruit  store in the building of the »Ez Chaim« Talmud Torah School (1929) @ Ullstein
Entrance of the building at no. 31 with a view of the facade and Hebrew signs (partial view)
Partial view of the facade of Grenadierstrasse 31: Hebrew signs for the Hotel Adler and the »Bet Hamidrasch Agudat Israel« (a Jewish prayer room), ca. 1935 @ AKG

Joseph Lautmann (1916–2005) was born into an orthodox household in the Scheunenviertel neighborhood of Berlin. His parents were natives of Congress Poland who had come to Germany before the First World War. In a talk with Kerstin Campbell, Joseph Lautmann recalls the Talmud Torah School and everyday life in Grenadierstrasse in the 1920s.

Interview with Joseph Lautmann

»That’s number 31. It’s still the same. The »Ez Chaim« Talmud Torah School was on the second and upper stories of this building. A Talmud Torah school is a religious school and it was very strict, very pious. Yours truly went to school here –in the afternoon, that is. In the morning I went to the Jewish middle school for boys in Grosse Hamburger Strasse, which is still the location of the middle school today. And at around three in the afternoon I went to the Talmud Torah school and stayed until six. The way children run around today – we didn't have that back then. The women’s and  men’s section . . . the door, it still the same. The Talmud Torah school for children was up there, it hasn’t changed.«

Josef Lautmann (1916-2005) was interviewed by Kerstin Campbell, Berlin 2000

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