A small community on the Middle Moselle
The first Jewish families settled in Bernkastel around the middle of the 13th century. A continuous community can be traced from the late Middle Ages. By the middle of the 19th century numbers had grown to as many as 35 people; around 1900 the Jews of Bernkastel-Kues lived mainly from retail trade.
Synagogue and cemetery
The community’s synagogue was located at Burgstraße 7. The Jewish cemetery in Bernkastel was laid out in 1866 and used from 1867 to 1932; around 33 gravestones from the 19th and 20th centuries have survived.
The Nazi era
At the beginning of Nazi rule around 60 Jewish inhabitants lived in Bernkastel-Kues. Owing to antisemitic persecution and exclusion from economic life, most emigrated by 1938. Others were deported and murdered. The synagogue was destroyed; since then there has been no Jewish community in Bernkastel-Kues.
Remembrance today
For the 70th anniversary of the November Pogrom, seventeen Stolpersteine (“stumbling stones”) were laid in Bernkastel-Kues in 2008, in front of four houses — in memory of the victims of the Shoah. The Jewish cemetery on today’s Friedhofstraße in Bernkastel is an open place of remembrance.