page_title: History of the Jews in Cologne
section_title: Müngersdorf concentration camp
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Jews in Cologne / Nazism and World War II / Müngersdorf concentration camp
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Köln-Müngersdorf
context_page_description: The history of the Jews in Cologne is conjectured to date back possibly as far as the late Roman Empire, and is officially documented from the period of the High Middle Ages. Over its history, the Jewish community of Cologne has suffered persecutions, many expulsions, massacres and destruction. The community numbered about 19,500 people before its dispersal, murders and destruction in the 1930s by the Nazis before and during World War II. The community has re-established itself and now numbers about 4,500 members. Because of its historical continuity, today's Jewish synagogue calls itself the "oldest Jewish congregation north of the Alps".
context_section_description: After the organized and controlled destruction of lives, properties and establishments in the whole country, the antisemitic policies intensified also in Cologne. Jewish children could not attend any German school. By 1 January 1939 all the Jews were excluded from the economic life and constrained to forced labor. They were expropriated, renters were deprived of rent control.
  In total, more than 40% of the Jewish population emigrated before September 1939. In May 1939 the Jewish population was 8,406 with another 2,360 Mischlinge, persons of mixed Jewish-non-Jewish ancestry. When war came in September 1939, the remainder of Cologne Jewry became subject to an all-night curfew, their special food rations were far below that of the general population, they were officially forbidden to use public transport and, when allied bombing began, to use public air raid shelters.
  In May 1941 the Cologne Gestapo started to concentrate all Jewish from Cologne in so-called Jewish houses. From there they were transferred to the barracks in Fort V in Müngersdorf. The ghettoisation was the preparation for the deportation to exterminations camps. In September 1941 the "Police order about the identification of Jews" obliged all Jewish people in the German Reich more than six years old to wear a yellow badge sewed to the left side of the garment.
caption: Zwischenwerk V a, a memorial stone on Sportplatz remembers the nazi-victims
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