Publications

“Schalom” is published twice a year. It has reports on the work of the Jewish Museum of Westphalia, Jewish life in Westphalia and Germany today, the Shoah and National Socialism, anti-Semitism today and other human rights issues as well as subjects from Israel. It also publishes portraits and reviews.
The 20 to 24-page journal is published every year in spring and autumn by an editorial staff made up of members of the Association and the Board Visitors to the Museum and members of our Association receive the journal free of charge: a subscription costing 5 EUR a year is also available for all those interested.
All the issues since 2011 can be read online.

• Schalom 79 – Dezember 2016
• Schalom 78 – May 2016
• Schalom 77 – November 2015
• Schalom 76 – June 2015
• Schalom 75 – December 2014
• Schalom 74 – May 2014
• Schalom 73 – November 2013
• Schalom 72 – April 2013
• Schalom 71 – November 2012
• Schalom 70 – June 2012
• Schalom 69 – November 2011
• Schalom 68  – April 2011

Every month the Museum issues an email newsletter to which you can subscribe free of charge. “JMW aktuell” provides information on important events at the Jewish Museum, events in the coming month and provides tips on television, radio and internet productions which have to do with the subjects of the Museum. Just send an email to info@jmw-dorsten.de.

Der Jüdische Friedhof in Dorsten
Jewish Museum of Westphalia (publisher)
Der jüdische Friedhof in Dorsten. Ein kleiner Leitfaden (The Jewish Cemetery in Dorsten. A short guide,
Dorsten 2014, (published by the Museum) 5 EUR.
The so-called “Judenbusch” , the “Jewbush” hides the Jewish cemetery in Dorsten, one of 2,000 in Germany. The cemetery can be found under tress in the Hasselbecke nature park in the suburb of Feldmark. This brochure, published by the Jewish Museum of Westphalia, is an easy-to-understand guide for anybody wanting more detailed information. It contains general information on sites of Jewish life and death, explanations on Jewish families from Dorsten and their lives as well as their tombstones. It also shows translations of the Hebrew inscriptions with recent photographs. Practical information on a visit to the cemetery is given and some books are suggested for a closer study of the subject. The text was prepared by Walter Schiffer M.A. and Elisabeth Cosanne-Schulte-Huxel.

J. Monika Walther: “Und alles lebt, was einst mit mir hier lebte” Westfälische Heimat-Jüdische Nachbarn
An audio book. Art.no.:T-CD-014-500260-14.90 EUR plus 2.60 EUR postage – available at the Jewish Museum and via the webshop of the LWL-Medienzentrum für Westfalen.
For centuries Christians and Jews lived together, or at least alongside each other, in the towns and villages of Westphalia. And especially in the 19th and early 20th century, Jewish intellectuals, teachers, artists and academics made huge contributions to cultural life in Westphalia. In the space of just a few years Nazi dictatorship brutally ended the cultural richness of Jewish life in Westphalia. Thinking about and discussing the disenfranchisement, persecution and extermination of the Jewish population under the Nazi regime remains one of the focal points of historical education. Looking at regional history and biographies can provide excellent approaches to the subject. What happened here in the years before the deportations to the East began and the chimneys of the gas chambers started to spew out smoke? What was discrimination and persecution like in the provincial towns and villages of Westphalia far away from the Nazi centres of power? And how did the Jewish citizens, who had lived with and next to their Christian neighbours for generations, experience the process of social exclusion which culminated in extermination?

Iris Nölle-Hornkamp; Heimatkunde. Westfälische Juden und ihre Nachbarn
Iris Nölle-Hornkamp (for the Jewish Museum of Westphalia):
Heimatkunde. Westfälische Juden und ihre Nachbarn
Essen 2014 (Klartext Verlag) 287 pages, many pictures, hardback, 29.95 EUR
This book looks at a new perspective of Jewish-non-Jewish neighbourly relations and how they ended in the 19th and 20th centuries: various attitudes to the subject of homeland, right of residence, love of one’s homeland, loss of homeland and several homelands are discussed, including the self-perception of the immigrants of the last 20 years. Young and famous academics and other authors contribute systematic analyses and other examples e.g. on Jews in rural areas and acculturation in Westphalia, Jewish patriotism and civil rights struggle, Jews in clubs and local politics, Jewish craftsmen and farmers, loss of homeland and remigration, persecution and self-assertion. With contributions by Reinhard Rürup, Ulrike Schneider, Olaf Blaschke, Cordula Lissner, Gisela Möllenhoff, Fritz Ostkämper, Julian Voloj, Christina Goldmann, Arno Herzig, Andread Meyer, Lore Shelley, Aubrey Pomerance, Jewgenij Kagan, Ruth Weiss and others.

Johanna Eichmann – Die rote Johanna
The Jewish Museum has published the second volume of the memoirs of Johanna Eichmann, the Honorary President of the Association entitled “Die rote Johanna”. The memoirs describe the stages in Johanna Eichmann’s life from the 1950s to the present day. In the first volume she described life in her extended Jewish family, war and the Nazi regime, persecution and forced labour and here she focuses on the next stages in her life: entering the Dorsten convent of the Ursuline nuns, the extensive reforms as a result of the second Vatican Council and her work as a teacher and controversial, reform-minded principal of the Ursuline Secondary School. The book describes her rediscovery and approach to her Jewish origins in the last three decades. She also talks about the history group “Dorsten unterm Hakenkreuz”, the development of the Jewish Museum of Westphalia since the 1980s and new reflections on traditional, church anti-Judaism.
Johanna Eichmann: Die rote Johanna, Erinnerungen 1952-2012, Essen 2013 (Klartext-Verlag), 14.95 EUR.

Johanna Eichmann – “Du nix Jude, du blond, du deutsch!“
On the occasion of the 85th birthday of Johanna Eichmann, the former Director of the Jewish Museum of Westphalia and now Honorary President of the Association, the Jewish Museum published the first volume of her memoirs.
In the book entitled “Du nix Jude, du blond, du deutsch!” Johanna (née Ruth) Eichmann describes her childhood and youth in an extended Jewish family in Recklinghausen and the harassment she experienced at school and leisure time during the Nazi regime, the sanctuary of a Catholic boarding school and the restrictions she had to endure in her education because of Nazi school policy. After attending a private language school in Essen to become an interpreter, she went to Berlin, worked in a French Commission to help forced labourers deported from France until, in the turmoil of final months of the war with battles raging in Berlin, she herself as a “half-Jew” was made to do forced labour. Her mother, who at first experienced some degree of protection because she was married to a non-Jew, survived deportation and forced labour. The volume ends with her first steps after the War – return to the Ruhr area, university and entering the Order of the Ursulines.
Johanna Eichmann: “Du nix Jude, du blond, du deutsch.” Erinnerungen 1926-1952, 128 pages, many pictures, Essen 2011 (Klartext-Verlag) 14.95 EUR.

“Mein liebes Ilsekind”. Mit dem Kindertransport nach Schweden
Elisabeth Cosanne-Schulte-Huxel (on behalf of the Jewish Museum of Westphalia)
“Mein liebes Ilsekind”. Mit dem Kindertransport nach Schweden – Briefe an eine gerettete Tochter, Essen 2013 (Klartext-Verlag), many pictures, 19.95 EUR.

Ilse Reifeisen was a child when, on 28 October 1938, she and her parents Gertrud and Simon were deported to Poland, just like some 17,000 other stateless Jews of Polish descent; in spring 1939 the family was able to come back for the purpose of “winding up their business”. In December the daughter went to Sweden on a “Kindertransport” and was thus the only member of her family to escape the Shoah. Up to their deportation in January 1942, the parents wrote lots of letter to their daughter in Sweden. The letters reflect the worsening conditions, their ideas on the daughter’s education, their desperate appeals to a 13-year-old to help them emigrate and save their lives and much more. The book documents the desperation of the parents and is an intensive description of everyday Jewish life in this region as well as a major contribution to research into Kindertransports under the Nazis.

From Dorsten to Chicago
Elisabeth Cosanne Schulte-Huxel (editor):
From Dorsten to Chicago, Lectures and contributions of the Eisendrath family reunion in Dorsten/Germany
Dorsten 2013 (BOD) – in-house publishers), 11 EUR
This book contains contributions to a Jewish family history beginning in Dorsten, Westphalia and continuing in the United States: lectures and short sketches on Jewish life in Dorsten in the 19th century, about the emigration process and the search for the family roots since the 1980s.

Angekommen? Lebenswege jüdischer Einrwanderer
Edited by Svetland Jebrak and Norbert Reichling on behalf of the Jewish Museum of Westphalia. With photo portraits by Dirk Vogel. Berlin 2010 (Verlag Heinrich & Heinrich), 173 pages, illustrations.
Established Jewish communities, new synagogues, tension between old and new members – sometimes we hear about the consequences of Jewish immigration. But what people are behind these changes. Using the example of the Ruhr area, this book looks into individual lives. 24 women and men talk about themselves and the very different reasons for coming and experiences they have made.
At bookstores and the Museum 12.90 EUR (by mail plus postage costs).

Handout “Angekommen?! Jüdische Einwanderung 1990-2010”
Prepared by Svetlana Jebrak, Dorsten 2010 (Jewish Museum of Westphalia) 37 pages. Our research and exhibition project “Angekommen” led to a brochure with material and teaching ideas on the subject of “Jewish immigration to Germany 1990-2010” The publication was sponsored by the Leo Baeck programme. It contains short thematic sketches, source materials, particularly from our interviews, and teaching ideas.
Copies can be ordered from the Museum free of charge at info@jmw-dorsten.de.
The brochure is also available as a download on the “material” page.

Rolf Abrahamsohn: “Was machen wir, wenn der Krieg zu Ende ist?”
Lebenstationen 1925-2010
Edited by the Bochum Zentrum für Stadtgeschichte and the Jewish Museum of Westphalia, Essen 2010 (Klartext-Verlag), 96 pages, numerous illustrations.
Rolf Abrahamsohn is one of the few German Jews who can still report himself on the atrocities he experienced under the Nazis. The story of his life is also that of social integration of German Jews, shows how neighbours behaved in the early part of the Nazi regime, the major and also small crimes against Jews. Rolf Abrahamsohn also reports on the establishment of the tiny Jewish communities and the careful steps towards consolidation since the 1950s.
In bookstores and at the Museum 14.95 EUR (by mail also postage costs).

Von Bar Mizwa bis Zionismus. Jüdische Traditionen und Lebenswege in Westfalen
Jewish Museum of Westphalia
Bookstore price: 14.90 EUR
196 pages with 114 illustrations and index
Authors: Johanna Eichmann, Norbert Reichling, Thomas Ridder
Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, Bielefeld 2007.

Kleiner Leitfaden durchs Jüdische Museum
A small guide to the exhibitions “Jewish Religion and Tradition” and “Jewish Life in Westphalia”
Published by the Jewish Museum of Westphalia, 70 pages with 24 illustrations, authors: Norbert Reichling, Thomas Ridder, Dorsten 2007 (0.50 EUR).

Laula Plassmann, Familienbilder
Catalogue with pictures and texts including an introduction by Christian Heeck
70 pages, Dorsten 2009 (15 EUR).

Norbert Fasse, Vom Adelsarchiv zur NS-Propaganda
The symptomatic life of Heinrich Glasmeier of Dorsten (1892-1945) (Publications of the Verein für jüdische Geschichte und Religion), Bielefeld 2002 (4 EUR).

“Die Synagoge – Schnittpunkt jüdischen Lebens”
Museumsforum, exhibition journal of the Jewish Museum of Westphalia, Dorsten 1999, 16 pages, approx. 30 one-colour photos. (2.50 EUR).

Zeitenbruch 1933-1945. Jüdische Existenz in Rheinland-Westfalen. Edited by Marina Sassenberg
Essen, Klartext Verlag 1999. 102 pages, numerous one-colour photos. (Book: 10 EUR, CD-ROM: 10 EUR, combi-package book/CD-ROM: 15 EUR).

Wolf Stegmann / Johanna Eichmann, Jewish Museum of Westphalia
Documentation centre and place of learning for Jewish history and religion in Dorsten. A contribution to the history of Jews in Westphalia – catalogue.
Dorsten 1992, 278 pages, numerous colour and black and white photos. (5 EUR).

Wolf Stegemann / Johanna Eichmann, Der Davidstern
Zeichen der Schmach – Symbol der Hoffnung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Juden, Dorsten 1991 (8 EUR).

Wolf Stegemann / Johanna Eichmann, Juden in Dorsten und in der Herrlichkeit Lembeck
Dorsten 1989, 300 pages, numerous black and white photos (5 EUR).

Wolf Stegemann / Anke Klapsing, Dorsten zwischen Kaiserreich und Hakenkreuz, volume 5
The crisis years of the Weimar Republic, Dorsten 1987 (5 EUR).

Wolf Stegemann / Thomas Ridder, Der 20. Juli 1944. Die Schulenburgs – Eine Familie im tragischen Konflikt zwischen Gehorsam und Hochverrat
A documentation by the Verein für jüdische Geschichte und Religion – catalogue and book. 66 pages, 32 black and white photos (5 EUR).

Contemporary history 1933-1945 in map of the town (1 EUR).