stranded at the border, fed only intermittently by the Polish Red Cross and Jewish welfare organizations. Their son Herschel Grynszpan was in Paris at the time. When he heard about the expulsion of his family to Poland, he drove to the German embassy and killed the German diplomat Eduard Ernst vom Rath.
The Nazis took this act as a pretext to stage a nationwide pogrom known as Kristallnacht. It was in Hanover on November 9, 1938 that the synagogue, designed in 1870 by Edwin Oppler in neo-romantic style, was burnt by the Nazis.
In September 1941, through the "Action Lauterbacher" plan, a ghettoisation of the remaining Hanoverian Jewish families began. Even before the Wannsee Conference, on December 15, 1941, the first Jews from Hanover were deported to Riga. A total of 2,400 people were deported, and very few survived. Of the approximately 4,800 Jews who had lived in Hannover 1938, fewer than 100 were still in the city when troops of the United States Army arrived on April 10, 1945 to occupy Hanover at the end of the war. Today, a memorial at the Opera Square is a reminder of the persecution of the Jews in Hanover.
After the war a large group of Orthodox Jewish Survivors of the nearby Bergen-Belsen concentration camp settled in Hanover. The Orthodox Jewish community was led by Rabbi Chaim Pinchos Lubinsky. Rabbi Lubinsky was assisted in this capacity by Rabbi Shlomo Zev Zweigenhaft. Following the departure of Rabbi Lubinsky in 1949, Rabbi Zweigenhaft assumed the position of Chief Rabbi of Hanover. Shortly thereafter Rabbi Zweigenhaft was appointed Chief Rabbi of the entire Lower Saxony a position he held until his departure in 1951. The Orthodox Jewish community made every attempt to persuade Rabbi Zweigenhaft to remain, even offering to fund his weekly journey from Switzerland. Rabbi Zweigenhaft declined the proposal and as a result the leaderless Orthodox Jewish community quickly began to disperse and shortly thereafter ceased to exist
