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PlacesPeople & PlacesLiving · since 1462

GERMANY · 50.1°N 8.7°E · CITY

Frankfurt am Main

JudengasseFree Imperial City · 1462-1866Prussia/Germany · 1866-1945Germany · 1945-present

The Judengasse ghetto (from 1462, one of Europe's oldest) gave the world the Rothschilds and Samson Raphael Hirsch's neo-Orthodoxy; today its excavated ghetto foundations form a premier ghetto-archaeology museum.

Modern locality anchor

Frankfurt am Main

Germany · City · 50.1°N 8.7°E

This anchor orients the sourced locality record. It is not a reconstructed historical position or border; the single map below provides geographic context.

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Where is Frankfurt am Main?

Land geometry: Natural Earth 1:50m via world-atlas. Pins mark modern localities or representative regional anchors stored on Atlas place records, not historical borders and not reconstructed positions. · Sources & methods

THE COMMUNITY TIMELINE · EVERY NODE DATED

What happened to the Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main?

1462–1811

Judengasse ghetto era

1811–1933

Emancipation-era prominence (~10% of city by 1880)

This section addresses destruction and loss. It is one chapter, not the whole story — continue to what survives and what was created after
1938–1945

1938 pogroms and deportations

1945–present

Postwar community

Today

Today

Mid-size community; premier ghetto-archaeology museum.

LANGUAGES & COMMUNITY

What did Frankfurt am Main sound like?

Yiddish (ייִדיש)Hebrew (עברית, Ivrit)

Yiddish (ייִדיש) is a language with its own grammar, literature, and history — not “broken” anything, and not a dialect of Hebrew.

AFTER · IN FULL COLOR

What survives today?

In Frankfurt am Main

Mid-size community; premier ghetto-archaeology museum.

  • Jewish Museum Frankfurt (incl. Judengasse museum)

    museum · museum

    Built over excavated ghetto foundations.

  • Borneplatz memorial

    memorial · public landmark

  • Old Jewish Cemetery (Battonnstrasse)

    cemetery · historic site

KEEP GOING

Related places & stories

Guided story · 7 stopsThe vanished Jewish cities of Eastern Europe — and what remainsOn the eve of WWII, one in three Warsaw residents was Jewish. What happened — and what is still standing?Begin the route

SOURCES & REVIEW

  • Holocaust Encyclopedia

    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum · open source

  • Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (place entry)

    Macmillan Reference USA · 2007

  • Germany - Virtual Jewish History Tour

    Jewish Virtual Library · open source

Reviewed 2026-07-30

Reading about Yiddish (ייִדיש) and Hebrew (עברית, Ivrit)? Baba can help you understand the languages in context →