Paths of Memory
By Rachel Rubin Green, Sept. 23, 2025, Rosh Hashanah Day 1, 5786
Coburg, Germany, the town where my mother and her family had lived, dedicated a Path of Remembrance this year to the Jewish community that had fled or was murdered in the Holocaust. Coburg is a town small enough that the medieval market square, or Marktplatz, is still the center of town. The town is Disney level Bavarian cute. Half-timbered buildings and Curlicues included. The town is famous as the birthplace of Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. It is infamous for having been the first town in Germany to elect a Nazi city council in 1927 and a Nazi mayor in 1929. As of Kristallnacht, the November pogrom in 1938, there were 42 Jewish families still living in the town, my mother’s included.
The current city council decided to take some steps towards admitting the role the town played in promoting Nazism, which I choose to see as beginning a collective Teshuva process. The council took two major actions. They commissioned a historian to spend 2 years writing a formal academic 600-page book about how and why the town embraced Nazi ideology. If it is ever translated into English, I will tell you about it then. The council also wanted to memorialize the Jewish community that had once flourished there. That is how the Path of Remembrance came into being.
Large metal information boards were placed in several locations around town, illustrating how integrated Jews were in many aspects of town life. Each board has German Language text, a few relevant photos or graphics, a map showing the location of each board in relation to the others, and a QR code connecting to information in other languages. Some boards highlight the role of Jews in various occupations, such as marking the locations of a once Jewish owned and operated small factory, store, or medical office. They also point out specifically Jewish locations, like the former synagogue and the large home that had served as the Jewish school after the implementation of the Nuremburg laws. There are fourteen large information boards in all. The marker on the Marketplatz itself is quite large – twice the size of the others – and summarizes the history of Jews in Coburg. It was quite important to us as descendants to have a memorial marker in the Marketplatz. That was where the Nazis had rallied and where our parents had been harassed, threatened, and humiliated. It is also where people are most likely to see it.
27 Descendants of the 42 Jewish families who lived in Coburg in 1938 attended the two-day dedication event. We came from Israel and North America. We had large group meals, told stories, heard lectures from academics and speeches from local politicians. We each signed the “Golden Book of Coburg,” which is taken out of storage only 2 or 3 times a year to welcome special visitors. My mom had signed it during her 2008 visit. We examined all 14 of the newly installed information boards.
Information board number 9, the ”Prugelstube”, best illustrates the collective Teshuva that the city is attempting in creating this memorial. This information board marks the building immediately behind city hall where, starting with the Nazi city government in 1929 and used increasingly after the national Nazi takeover in 1933, Jews were imprisoned, tortured and sometimes murdered. The information board honestly presents the criminal activity committed there in a publicly visible location. This visibility contrasts with a much smaller plaque placed on that same building 15 years ago, which is clear plexiglass, contains less information and can only be seen after walking into the alley where it is posted.
While the city government mostly resisted the attempts of descendants to participate in designing the project, they did request help with the information board at the Synagogue, stop number 3 on the path. The building that was once the synagogue had been built in 1529 as a Lutheran Chapel. It was used as a synagogue from 1873-1932. During that time, the Jewish community added a balcony with an outdoor stairway to serve as a women’s gallery. It is currently used as a Baptist church. My grandparents and other relatives had prayed there. I was thrilled to step in and write the text and choose some of the photos displayed. One shows a Tallit used by the father of one descendant at his Bar Mitzvah. Others are of my own Grandmother’s Siddur, published around 1910, including the signature she had scrawled inside the front cover that extended to the opposite page. “Bertl Forchheimer, Coburg.”
While I had seen the exterior of the Synagogue building on a previous visit, this time our guide was able to let us inside. The sign over the entry said then and now, in Hebrew, “Ze haShaar L’Adonoi”. Inside the vestibule an older stone is displayed with the inscription, “Pit Hu Li Shaare Tzedek Avo Vam Odeh Ya.” The guide told us that that one stone had been moved here from a previous synagogue built during the 16th century. An Israeli woman about my age told everyone that she wanted to sing. So, she, my sister and I walked up to the front of the small sanctuary and sang that Psalm. The Israeli woman knew a different melody than the one I’m accustomed to, but so what. When we finished, I announced that I believed these walls had not heard a Psalm sung in Hebrew since 1932. I felt, as many of you may have felt when you daven in long unused synagogues elsewhere, that our presence restores the holiness of Hebrew prayer to that space.
The notion of Teshuva permeates these experiences. Coburg created this series of informational memorials in order to recognize its role in wrongdoing. Admitting wrongdoing is the first step in the Teshuva process.
It is a painful irony that Coburg constructs memorials at the same time that the USA reduces and removes analogous signs and structures. I value every museum exhibit on Native American schools, monuments to the victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and other reminders of painful episodes in American history. Having had the pain of persecution and discrimination that my mother and the other Jewish residents endured acknowledged and memorialized by the current political representatives of the town, I would be doubly resentful if that recognition were now or in the future to be taken away.
Admitting a wrong, what Maimonides labeled confession, is the first step and only the first step in returning to our true and better selves and repairing ourselves and our society. Other steps towards Teshuva, such as choosing a different behavior when faced with similar circumstances, and the most difficult one of all, working towards repair of the damage, still remain undone. There is no time limit on Teshuva. It takes as long as it takes.
This Path of Remembrance dedication marks a significant step in the Teshuva process but not its completion. This perspective of Teshuva over time gives me renewed appreciation for the rituals we engage in on these holidays. First, rarely can we individually or collectively complete all the steps of Teshuva in a single year. We repeat these prayers and practices annually so we can see ourselves progress but not necessarily complete the process. Secondly, Teshuva over time allows us to reflect on and incorporate our own internal changes each year. Among many experiences this year, participating in this dedication changed me. I’m not sure yet exactly how, but it opened a new part of myself that I am still exploring.
As we continue into the New Year, let us open ourselves to experiences that deepen our identities and increase our appreciation for our ritual practices. Shana Tova.