See Inside a Berlin Synagogue ’s First Rosh Hashanah After World War II

When Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins on Wednesday night, it will mark the start of an annual period in which Jewish people around the world will take time to reflect on starting fresh in the new year. But few celebrants in modern history have had more cause for such reflection than the Berlin Jews who survived World War II. In 1945, legendary LIFE Magazine photographer Robert Capa was there to document the first Rosh Hashanah service held in the city since 1938, which took place on Sep. 7, 1945, at Fraenkelufer, a synagogue that the U.S. Army had helped restore after the Nazis torched it. There, he found a people reconnecting with one another and trying to start practicing their religion openly again in a city that was also in ruins. Capa would have understood their struggle. Born Endre Friedmann to a Jewish family in Hungary, he moved to Germany when he turned 18 in 1932 to pursue photojournalism. After Hitler rose to power, he fled to Paris and changed his name, having been inspired by the debonair director Frank Capra. His background didn’t prevent him from covering the war against the Nazis. In 1945 alone, he had spent weeks photographing the ruins Berlin, parachuted with the 17th Paratrooper Division into the combat zone between the German city Wesel and the country’s border with the Netherlands, embedded with U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry Division and produced a photo essay for LIFE on an American soldier killed by a German sniper to show the he...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized 1945 faith Holidays LIFE Magazine photography robert capa rosh hashanah Source Type: news