Max Cohn (German, unknown)
Aus Vergilbten Akten: Zur Geschichte der Bonner Synagogengemeinde
(Trans. Of Yellowed Documents: the history of the Bonn Jewish community)
1931
Bonn
From the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica

Aus Vergilbten Akten: Zur Geschichte der Bonner Synagogengemeinde. Zukunftsaugaben der Bonner Synagogengemeinde (of yellowed documents: the history of the Bonn Jewish community. Future tasks of the Bonn Jewish community). Written by the jurist Dr. Max Cohn.

A Jewish presence in Bonn is recorded from the time of the first crusade in the 11th century, and Bonn was long acclaimed as a center of Jewish learning. In the early 19th century, the city became the seat of a Jewish consistory (one of the state-controlled Jewish communal bodies that were first devised by Napoleon). A Jewish congregation was officially formed in 1865, and a new synagogue on the banks of the Rhine was dedicated in 1879. By the time Aus Vergilbten Akten was written in 1931, the Jews of Bonn numbered around 1,000. The population count fell by over half in 1938 following Kristellnacht when the synagogues were destroyed and many Jews fled the city. Towards the end of the war, two hundred of the incarcerated Jewish citizens of Bonn were deported to concentration camps; seven survived.

Few histories of the Bonn Jewish community have been written and thus this piece, one of just three copies held in world libraries, is important. Moreover, a stamp on this copy which reads “archival depot Offenbach” bears witness to its having survived the Nazi destruction of Jewish books. At the end of the war, millions of looted books were uncovered by the Allies. The books were carefully sorted at the Offenbach Archival Depot by the U.S. book restitution task force and returned to their country of origin. The residue that could not be identified were distributed to centers of Judaism and Jewish learning throughout the United States and Israel.