Judensau Relief and Memorial at St. Mary's Church, Wittenberg

The new information board "Site of Reminder" from April 2023 concludes as follows: "The city church community in Wittenberg distances itself from anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews. It asks God and the Jewish people for forgiveness for this blasphemy and the insult to all Jews. The Evangelical Church sees "It is our responsibility to critically examine our part in the centuries-long history of violence against Jews and to actively campaign against anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism."

Dealing well with old guilt! When heralds of light recognize their own shadows, the world can truly become brighter.

Memorial at the town church of Wittenberg

At the south-east corner of the town church in Wittenberg there has been a mockery and mockery of the Jewish religion since around 1290. Abusive sculptures of this kind, which show Jews in connection with pigs - animals that are considered unclean in Judaism - were particularly common in the Middle Ages. There are still about fifty such sculptures. Persecution of the Jews took place in Saxony at the beginning of the 14th century and in 1440, and in 1536 Jews were forbidden to stay in Saxony.
In 1543 Martin Luther published the anti-Judaist writings “Of the Jews and their lies” and “Of the Shem Hamphoras and the sex of Christ”, to which the inscription on the abusive sculpture refers. It was attached in 1570, like the Latin text on the eaves, which equates the Reformation initiated by Martin Luther with Jesus' cleansing of the temple (Matthew 21) and polemicizes against "papists".

The memorial beneath the abusive sculpture was unveiled in November 1988, fifty years after the beginning of the pogroms against Jews in Nazi-ruled Germany. The base plate, cast in bronze, shows four tread plates tilted against each other, which look as if they were laid in muddy ground. The joints form a sign of the cross. The surrounding text connects the inscription on the abusive sculpture with the Holocaust: "God's real name / the reviled Shem Ha Mphoras / whom the Jews before the Christians / held almost unspeakably holy / died in six million Jews / under a sign of the cross." It says in Hebrew Scripture beginning of Psalm 130: "Out of the depths I call to you, Lord". The bronze plate was designed by the sculptor Wieland Schmiedel. The transcription was written by the writer Jürgen Rennert.

(Source: wittenberg.de/staticsite/staticsite.php?menuid=2111&topmenu=218)

Since 1988 there has been a memorial below the anti-Semitic insulting picture on the town church to refer to the pogroms against Jews