Reestablishment Landmarks of Jewish History

At the end of the war in 1945, there were still about 700 Jews living in Hamburg. Twelve of them planned to reestablish the congregation starting in July 1945. On September 18, 1945, the founding meeting of the Hamburg Jewish Congregation took place as a moderate Orthodox so-called “unified Congregation”.

In 1948, it officially became the legal successor to the disbanded German- Israelite Congregation. It was made up of Hamburg Jews who had survived thanks to their non-Jewish partners, in hiding places, or in concentration camps. In addition, there were so called displaced persons, mostly from Eastern Europe. They had been deported or expelled during World War II and remained in Hamburg temporarily or permanently. The number of members grew to about 1,300 due to immigration from the Soviet Union, the Balkans, Iran, and Israel, and remained stable until the end of the 1980s.