3. Former jewish school

3. Former jewish school

At the beginning of the 1940/41 school year, all schools in the country were required to draw up lists of names of Jewish pupils. From 1 November 1940, Jewish pupils were excluded from the public schools. However, the Chief of the Civil Administration ordered compulsory education for Jewish children aged 6-16 in Jewish schools. Due to a shortage of teaching staff, the consistory of the Jewish Community of Luxembourg was only able to found and operate one such school. It was located at Petrusring 74 (today 72, Boulevard de la Pétrusse), a building which was used as a cultural centre and prayer place by Jewish immigrants from the East during the 1930s. Three classrooms were set up here. Initially, 80 to 100 pupils between the ages of 6 and 14 attended the Jewish school. They were taught in mixed two-year classes. The children's everyday life was marked by a high fluctuation of the school population, due to expulsions, emigration and flights. The school's resources were scarce: lack of teachers, lack of materials and bureaucratic hurdles made learning conditions difficult. Since the anti-Jewish measures forbade Jews to enter public places, streets and roads between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., the consistory had to apply for exemption permits so that both teachers and pupils were able to reach school on time. The school's curriculum is noteworthy: unlike the public schools in Luxembourg, where French lessons were forbidden, French was taught here from grade 3 and English from grade 6. This exceptional permission was granted because it was thought that Jews had to leave Luxembourg anyhow.

The school was run by the physicist, mathematician and teacher Dr Ernst Ising. Ising had fled from Caputh near Potsdam, where he had run a school for Jewish students who had been excluded from public schools by the Nazi regime. He came to Luxembourg after the events of the Night of Broken Glass on 9 November 1938. As a mixed marriage partner, he survived the Shoah.

On 6 October 1941, the Jewish school closed after only 10 months because most pupils and several teachers were deported with the first transport to the Litzmannstadt ghetto on 16/17 October 1941. Among the 323 deportees were the teachers Hugo Friedmann, Bernard Herrmann and Lily Gelber. Only 11 of these 323 deportees survived the Shoah. After this first deportation, only about 12 former pupils of the Jewish school remained in Luxembourg, who were still taught by the teacher and headmaster Dr Ernst Ising at Petrusring 74. From August 1942, Ising taught the last three children in the so-called Jewish old people's home in Fünfbrunnen in the north of Luxembourg.

3. Former jewish school in pictures