The address list is part of the archive of the Breslau synagogue community. It was compiled in the early twentieth century and comprised loose typewritten pages, written in German. The pages were stored in two folders marked "A-J" and "K-Z". The "A-J" folder is also marked with a handwritten date which appears to be "1933". The list records the addresses, occupations and dates of birth of 17234 adult members of the community. Each street was allocated a sequential index number. Streets numbered from 1 to 453 form one set, arranged in alphabetical order. A second set comprising a further 24 streets and the estates of Bischofswalde and Zimpel follows, again in alphabetical order; this may reflect movement and growth of the Jewish community since the original list was compiled.

The list includes Louis Riesenfeld and his wife Henriette geb. Weissenberg; their gravestone in Breslau's old Jewish cemetery shows that Louis died in August 1924, so we can conclude that the list was compiled before that date. The list shows several married couples whose weddings took place in 1929 and 1930 so we can assume it was still being maintained until then. Charlotte Bandmann married in 1931, but is shown as single in the list, so we may assume it started to fall into disuse by 1930-31.

The list uses two digits to represent the year of birth. No births are recorded in the years '10 - '29, so we can conclude that the birth dates lie in the range 1830 to 1909. Some of the youngest people in the list (born in '09) are described as "Ehefrau" (married woman) and "Kaufmann" (businessmann), so it appears that minors, probably under the age of 21, are not listed.

At some time in the past the archived documents were photographed or scanned and during 2012-13 they were published briefly on the internet. (They were subsequently published by the Jewish Historical Instute of Warsaw.) It appears from the order in which the images are numbered that the pages were no longer in their original order; they come in batches, each alphabetical (although some in reverse order) and the batches themselves are in random order. A gap in the street numbering is evidence that pages covering about 30 streets from the first set between Graupenstrasse and Herderstrasse are missing. Pages covering two streets from the second set are also missing. The published images contain 903 pages of addresses.

About this transcription

This transcription is taken from copies of the images published during 2012-13. Dates of birth are presented in "day / month / year" format. Occupations are presented here as they were originally recorded - these are often abbreviated. I have added transcription notes to indicate where I am unsure about my reading of the original records or, indeed, where the original record is clearly wrong. I am indebted to Stephen Falk for his help in transcribing part of the list and for providing evidence to help date it; and to Ingo Paul for his help in reading and correcting many entries by cross-reference to his work on the Jews in the north of the German empire.