photo #5845036

In 1931, Rosi Posner, wife of Rabbi Arthur Posner in Kiel, Germany, took this photo of the family Hanukkah menorah on the window ledge of the family home looking out on to the building across the road decorated with a Nazi flag. Hitler was a year away, but shadows were already lengthening. The depression-haunted Germany, its industries ravaged, its unemployment at 30%, its politics grid-locked, was increasingly looking to national socialism as its savior. In the elections of September 1930, the Nazis won 18% of the seats, a share that would double in July 1932 elections, eating away at the supporters of the rightwing DNVP and the fragmented smaller parties. Kiel, in northern Schleswig-Holstein, was one of the early bastions of Nazi support (in the 1932 elections, 51% there voted for Hitler, highest in any region). Persecution of the Jews began there earlier. In 1932, public notices saying “Jews forbidden from entering” were starting to appear across the city, and in August 1932, Kiel’s synagogue and a Jewish-owned department store would be bombed. Rabbi Arthur Posner made official complaints and engaged in public debates, but he was ridiculed and the family threatened. After convincing many of his congregants to leave, mostly to the United States, the Posners also escaped in 1933, arriving in British Palestine in 1934. They brought the historic menorah with them. In 1974, when a municipal museum put out an ask for everyday objects that illustrated the story of Jewish life, Rosi sent her photo to the museum. The photo was an instant sensation, appearing in newspaper reviews, magazines and school textbooks.