City of Bocholt invites you to commemorate the pogrom night

Mayor Christian Mangen cordially invites the people of Bocholt to a silent commemoration of the victims of the pogrom night on Sunday, 9 November at 7.30 pm. The event will take place at the memorial site of the once desecrated synagogue in front of the Haus des Handwerks, Europaplatz 17.

Together, they will remember the suffering inflicted on Jewish fellow citizens 87 years ago. Pupils from Mariengymnasium will help to organise the commemoration, thereby setting an example against forgetting and in favour of humanity and solidarity.

A special moment of the commemoration will be the unveiling of a previously unknown photograph of the front view of the Bocholt synagogue. After decades of research, the Bocholt city archives were only recently able to locate this important historical document.

Mayor Christian Mangen emphasises the importance of remembering. "Remembering the victims of the pogrom night remains a permanent obligation of our city", explains Mangen, "The fact that young people in Bocholt are taking responsibility for what must not be forgotten by participating in the commemoration is a very strong signal."

Following the public commemoration, the city of Bocholt invites you to the Kinodrom Bocholt, Meckenemstraße 8, at 20:30. The film "One Life" will be shown, which tells the true story of the British man Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia shortly before the Second World War. Admission is free, advance booking is possible via www.kinodrom.de.

Background to the attached press photo:

Henni Hochheimer, one of the few surviving Jewish women from Bocholt, also remembers the terrible events of Pogrom Night. In a letter written in 1948 to the then head of the town council, Mr Kayser, she vividly described the events of that night and the suffering of her family. Henni Hochheimer, her husband Max and son Paul were deported from Bocholt to the ghetto in Riga in 1941. They were deported back to the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk on 9 August 1944 because the liberation of Riga was imminent due to the advance of the Red Army. Like most of the male prisoners, Max and Paul Hochheimer were taken to Buchenwald concentration camp on 13 August 1944. Max Hochheimer was deported from Buchenwald to a subcamp in Rehmsdorf-Tröglitz in September 1944. Max Hochheimer succumbed to the hardships of his three-year imprisonment on 11 November 1944, while his son Paul was liberated but died in Buchenwald concentration camp on 19 April 1945. Henni Hochheimer returned to Bocholt in June 1945. She died on 1 February 1963 in Hollis Hils near New York.