SARREGUEMINES

SARREGUEMINES, town in the Moselle department, northeastern France. Jews have lived in Sarreguemines since the 13th century. Expelled in 1477, they reappeared at the latest in 1690 under the French occupation. One family was authorized to settle in the town in 1721, others in 1753, and still others in 1787. The synagogue, erected about 1769, was rebuilt in 1862, and again in 1959, after having been destroyed in 1940. The local rabbinate was established in 1791. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Jewish community slowly grew. By 1939, it numbered approximately 395. It is estimated that about 89 of Sarreguemines' Jews died during the Holocaust. In 1971 the Jewish community numbered 250. In 2005, in an act of vandalism, over 60 of the Jewish cemetery's 500 tombstones were toppled and smashed. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. Hiegel, Châtellenie… de Sarreguemines (1934), 314–5; R. Weil, in: Almanach-Calendrier des communautés israélites de la Moselle (1956), 81–83. (Gilbert Cahen)