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A visible sign against anti-Semitism in the heart of Hamburg - that is what the Bornplatz Synagogue should be after its reconstruction.

According to its own information, the Reconstruction Initiative has found more than 107,000 supporters for this concern.

Most of them would have “No to anti-Semitism.

Yes to the Bornplatz Synagogue, ”said the founder of the initiative, Daniel Sheffer, on Wednesday.

Since the start of the campaign on November 9th, numerous e-mails, letters and calls have also been received.

The concern was symbolically handed over to the city and the Jewish community of Hamburg on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Now it is about how the former largest synagogue in Northern Germany can be rebuilt on its old place in the Grindelviertel.

State Councilor Jan Pörksen (SPD) said that a feasibility study was being awarded these days.

The question is: “How can we make Jewish life in Hamburg tangible again as it was?” The reconstruction of the synagogue, which was damaged in 1938 and forcibly demolished in 1939, is a sign that can be seen from afar.

The budget committee of the Bundestag had released 65 million euros for the project at the end of November.

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In Sheffer's words, there are now many practical questions to be discussed: How many Jews will attend the synagogue?

Are you coming by car or bike?

How is security guaranteed?

On the former Bornplatz there is a bunker built during the war that divides the square.

This massive building is used by the university and is a listed building.

On the northeast side memorial plaques remind of the synagogue.

The position of its dome has been marked by a floor mosaic since 1988.

"We are based on the preparatory work of many others who work against anti-Semitism and for an equal Jewish life in Germany and Hamburg," said Sheffer.

The dedication and memory of the former Bornplatz is also a basis for the reconstruction initiative.

But successful reminders and reminders must reach many people.

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"And at Bornplatz - at least for me - there are still not enough that have been achieved", explained the initiator.

The reconstruction offers an enormous opportunity to multiply the warning through encounters.

"What the Nazis made invisible, we make visible again," explained Sheffer.

"The crimes of the Shoah will never be forgotten"

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Citizenship President Carola Veit (SPD) said at the Hannoverscher Bahnhof memorial in Hafencity: "In our Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg we maintain a sustainable culture of remembrance." The memorial, which opened in 2017, commemorates the deportation of more than 8,000 people to the extermination camps.

For Hamburg it is a place of mourning and shame, but also a worthy place of remembrance.

The names of the deported Jews, Sinti and Roma from northern Germany are listed on 20 boards.

The citizens voted unanimously in favor of creating the office of anti-Semitism commissioner.

The reconstruction of the Bornplatz synagogue was also unanimously approved.

Eli Fel, 2nd chairman of the Hamburg Jewish community, also remembered his grandmother in his speech

Source: dpa / Christian Charisius

None of the victims should ever be forgotten, said Hamburg's second mayor Katharina Fegebank (Greens) and emphasized: "The crimes of the Shoah will never be forgotten." They are the best-documented crimes in human history.

Between 1.3 and 1.5 million people were murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp liberated 76 years ago.

"If we kept a minute's silence for every victim of the crimes of the Holocaust, it would be quiet for the next eleven years," said Fegebank.

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"History and atrocities cannot be illustrated in statistics and numbers, and speeches are only suitable to a limited extent," said the second chairman of the Hamburg Jewish Community, Eli Fel.

He remembered his grandmother, Cila Melamed, who was born in Riga on January 27, 1905.

At the end of 1945 she looked for relatives in her hometown and wrote a poem about it in Yiddish that Fel recited.

In it she confessed her joy about the liberation of the city from the Germans, but also her pain about the murder of almost all Jewish residents: "I cried day and night."