A family in historical time

Jewish life in Halberstadt is recorded in a bishop’s protective writ.

A mob and soldiers demolish the synagogue on Judenstraße; the community pursues legal redress.

The great synagogue supported by Berend Lehmann is inaugurated.

Israel Jacobson, later a pioneer of Reform Judaism, is born in Halberstadt.

Civil emancipation advances through Westphalian, Prussian and imperial law.

The Reichenbach firm’s own later advertisement gives this as the founding year.

Salomon Gustav Reichenbach, later the documented link to Wernigerode, is born at Halberstadt to Jacob and Helene.

The family genealogy records Goldine Marcuse’s birth at Schwerin; civil-record confirmation remains to be found.

Adolf Reichenbach marries Goldine Marcuse at Schwerin.

After longstanding restrictions on Jewish residence, Gustav is among the first Jews admitted to live in Wernigerode under Prussian authority.

Paul Reichenbach is born at Halberstadt.

Salomon Gustav Reichenbach marries Jeanette Rosenbaum. Their civil record documents the Halberstadt and Wernigerode households as one family.

Paul Reichenbach and Margarete Liebenthal marry.

Paul joins the newly founded Halberstadt section of the Alpine Association.

Hoher Weg 27 and Martiniplan 10 are rebuilt as a unified department store.

Germany declares war on Russia as the July Crisis expands into the First World War; declarations against France and the invasion of Belgium follow within days.

Adolf “Dolf” Reichenbach is born at Halberstadt.

Paul receives the Prussian Merit Cross for War Aid.

The armistice is signed and the fighting of the First World War ends. Germany and Austria-Hungary have been defeated, and the German monarchy has fallen.

Paul turns fifty. Two days later the Central-Verein-Zeitung honors the former Halberstadt branch chairman for his years of work against antisemitism and his many honorary offices.

The directory names Paul and Ernst as proprietors at Hoher Weg 27 and Martiniplan 10.

Gustav dies. Jeanette continues the Wernigerode business and later passes its operation to their son Fritz.

President Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler chancellor. Over the following eighteen months, the Nazis transform Germany from a democracy into a dictatorship.

The Halberstadt Alpine Club section requires applicants to prove ‘Aryan descent,’ formalizing exclusion after Paul’s decades of documented membership.

The Nuremberg Laws turn racial exclusion into national law and reduce German Jews to subjects without full political rights.

Paul dies suddenly at Halberstadt, sixty-six days after the Nuremberg Laws were proclaimed. His family remembers the cause as a heart attack.

Fritz is forced to sell Breite Straße 7, arrested on 10 November during the November pogrom and killed at Buchenwald on 22 November.

Halberstadt’s building police order demolition of the desecrated 1712 synagogue; dismantling begins the next day at the Jewish community’s expense.

Dolf writes to Margarete from St. Moritz: “one is a person again.” English translation by Rabbi Dr. Esther Jilovsky.

Ruth and Albert Rothschild were already in the United States before Dolf and Margarete made their escape. A family account recalls that Albert’s friend Max wrote a letter in support of Dolf’s move.

Dolf and Margarete emigrate to the United States.

Werner Reichenbach and his wife Margarete escape from Wernigerode and survive in Brazil.

Germany invades Poland, beginning the Second World War in Europe.

Kurt Reichenbach, Paula Wollenberg and Hans Wollenberg are forced from Halberstadt on 12 April. Their train leaves Magdeburg on 14 April and reaches Warsaw on 16 April.

Jeanette Reichenbach is deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt on Transport I/64; she dies there on 25 October.

A Berlin Kultusvereinigung death card records Ernst Reichenbach’s death after his last residence at Normannenstraße 2 in Nikolassee.

The Federal Archives records Martha Reichenbach’s deportation from Berlin to Auschwitz. A conflicting family account remains preserved in her biography.

Incendiary bombing destroys Halberstadt’s center and much of the old town, including the Reichenbach commercial building at Hoher Weg 27 and Martiniplan 10.

Germany’s unconditional surrender takes effect, ending the Second World War in Europe.

Survivors rebuild lives in the United States and Brazil; restitution questions remain.

Paul J. Reichenbach remembers Margarete’s death on this date; a secondary cemetery index gives the same date and records her burial at Temple Israel Cemetery in Wakefield, Massachusetts.

Paul J. Reichenbach spends childhood summers at Camp Zakelo on Long Lake in Maine. Family memory credits the experience with shaping his lifelong love of camp.

At seventeen, Paul spends a formative summer at the UAHC’s Kutz Camp in Warwick, New York, and continues returning in the years that follow.

Paul moves to New York City to attend New York University and shares an apartment with his Kutz friend Loui Dobin.

Paul J. Reichenbach serves the Reform movement for forty-four years, working across NFTY, Israel travel and the URJ camp system.

Paul begins directing NFTY Israel programs, which eventually bring more than 30,000 teenagers and young adults to Israel and Europe.

Family records give Dolf’s death on this date; a secondary cemetery index corroborates 1979 and places his burial at Temple Israel Cemetery in Wakefield.

Daniel Dolph Reichenbach is born, carrying his grandfather Dolf’s name into a new generation.

Paul supervises the URJ camp system as it expands from twelve camps to eighteen at its peak and develops new specialty camps.

Daniel Reichenbach and other descendants of former Jewish residents are received at Halberstadt’s Rathaus and add their names to the city’s Golden Book.

Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion ordains Daniel Dolph Reichenbach as a rabbi in New York.

Descendants assemble the archive and return the family’s documents to public history.