TF–13

The collections of Berthold Rosenthal are a stroke of luck. After the Mannheim teacher was forced into retirement by the Nazis in 1933, he searched the municipal archives in Baden and Hesse for records of rural Jewry. As if he suspected that much would be lost, he noted down thousands of genealogical data in school notebooks, even after 1938 and a stay in a concentration camp in Dachau. The memorbuch, which he found in the Lorsch synagogue, was also unique for Rosenthal. Similar to a monastic necrology, the Jewish Memorbuch is a register of the dead commemorating the deceased on anniversaries. It is kept under the almemor (lectern) of the synagogue. Hence its name. Rosenthal noted the data of 19 persons from the years 1758 to 1850. Since there were several more deaths in the community during this period, either only certain persons were recorded, or the genealogist noted a selection. For two persons their effected donations are recorded. One tragic incident, in which an entire family was wiped out in 1831, was recorded by Rosenthal in the original Hebrew of the preacher of the time. Samuel Mainzer, his wife Chawa and their daughter Esther had been murdered by their Christian neighbor and tenant. The murderer, a Hessian gendarme, committed suicide. As a result, the crime has never been publicly investigated. All three victims were buried in a common grave, which is unusual. Their fate was engraved on the stone, but was forgotten the more it weathered. Only after translation of the copy of the Memorbuch, which in its recording of this deed is reminiscent in its diction of the medieval Nuremberg Martyrology, are details known again. Berthold Rosenthal and his wife managed to escape to America in 1940. He was able to save his records.