The Synagogue on Prinz-Friedrich-Karl-Strasse

Since September 1956, the religious, cultural and social centre of the Jewish community in Dortmund has been located on Prinz-Friedrich-Karl-Strasse. The Community Centre with Synagogue is where the religious worship takes place, but it is also a venue for concerts and readings, as well as regular annual festivals and festivities such as the Purim and Hanukkah Balls. Since 2011, the centre has also had its own mikveh. The ritual bath is accorded high symbolic significance in the Jewish liturgy. It stands for spiritual uplift and constant renewal – believers emerge spiritually purified from the mikveh.

Following the Holocaust, it seemed highly questionable whether there would ever be a Jewish community in Dortmund again. However, already in the summer of 1945, a small number of survivors, headed by Siegfried Heimberg, set about rebuilding it. After temporary arrangements in the early post-war years, they succeeded in building the new Community Centre we know today. The rich religious and social life that prevails there today has long confirmed the motto under which it was built, namely “People who build houses have plans to stay.”

The present-day Community Centre with Synagogue on Prinz-Friedrich-Karl-Strasse was officially inaugurated in 1956. Ever since then, the brick-built edifice has been at the heart of the social and religious life of the Jewish population of Dortmund.