Fellheim, Germany

Five Jewish families were among the settlers who rebuilt the village in 1670 after its destruction in 1633. A new cemetery was consecrated in 1777 and a synagogue in 1786. In the early l9th century Jews constituted two-thirds of the population, numbering nearly 400. By the 1840s a decline set in through emigration to the U.S. and (from the 1860s) nearby Memmingen. In 1857, the Jewish public school still enrolled 96 children but by 1890 the Jewish population was down to 108. In 1933, 26 Jews remained. On Kristallnacht (9-l0 November 1938), the synagogue and Jewish homes were vandalized. Six Jews left for the U.S. in 1938 and another six in 1941. The remaining 14 were deported, eight of them to Piaski (Poland) via Munich on 3 April 1942.