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Berlin synagogue reopens after restoration

Rabbis and cantors carry the Torah during the inauguration of the synagogue on Rykestrasse in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district on Friday. PHOTO: AFP

Germany's biggest synagogue reopened on Friday after a major restoration, in a defiant symbol of the rebirth of Jewish life in the city where the Nazis planned the Holocaust.

A special ceremony was held at the century-old, red-brick building in east Berlin which narrowly avoided being destroyed on Kristallnacht -- the night in 1938 when Adolf Hitler's followers torched Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship.

More than 1,000 guests including elderly Holocaust survivors confined to wheelchairs entered the synagogue past airport-style metal detectors and dozens of police officers, some armed with automatic weapons.

A few gasped as they saw the refurbished main sanctuary, pointing to lovingly repainted frescoes, new stained glass windows and gleaming chandeliers.

Leading the service was Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski, a native of Belarus who came to Berlin in 2000 as part of an influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union that has made Germany one of the fastest growing Jewish communities in the world.

He dedicated the reopening to the members of the Rykestrasse synagogue congregation who were murdered in the Holocaust.

"As we remember the past, we must not forget all those from Rykestrasse who were killed in concentration camps, work camps, who died of hunger, gas or were shot," he said. "They are here today in our minds and our souls."

Berlin had a thriving Jewish community that counted 173,000 members in the 1920s. After World War II, the population numbered just 6,500.

Rabbi Leo Trepp, 94, who had preached at the synagogue in the 1930s after the Nazis came to power and later fled the country, received a standing ovation for a moving sermon.

"It is a miracle that there are Jews in Germany again," Trepp said. "And the synagogue on Rykestrasse, which survived two different regimes, is the symbol of that miracle."

Rita Rubinstein, an 85-year-old who worshipped at the synagogue as a teenager, returned to Berlin for the first time in more than 70 years to light the candles at the Sabbath service on Friday evening. Christians and Muslims have also been invited to participate.

Erhard Koerting, Berlin's top official for interior affairs, pledged at the ceremony that the authorities would ensure that Jewish life in the city was never "threatened or marginalized again."

Hermann Simon, director of the Centrum Judaicum -- a foundation for Jewish history and culture -- acknowledged tensions between Russian-speaking immigrants and native German members of the community and called for greater acceptance of newcomers.

"You are always welcome here," Simon, the scion of a centuries-old family of Berlin Jews, said in German and then Russian in a gesture that drew cheers and applause.

Built in 1904, the neo-Classical synagogue was closed for more than three years for the 4.5-million-euro (US$6 million) refit, paid for by the city and with lottery proceeds.

Architects Ruth Golan and Kay Zareh used three surviving black-and-white photographs of the original building to recreate its remarkable elegance.

The 1,200-capacity synagogue was one of the few Jewish institutions in Berlin to survive the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) pogrom of Nov. 9, 1938.

It was spared because it was located between "Aryan" apartment buildings which might have caught fire had the synagogue been burned down.

The last prayer service at the synagogue took place in April 1940.
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