With great public participation from politics, civil society and representatives of the international and European B’nai B’rith organizations, the exhibition “… to become a blessing for humanity …” was opened last Tuesday in the Römerhallen in Frankfurt am Main. The extremely impressive exhibition was preceded by a research project initiated by the Frankfurt-Schönstedt Lodge of B’nai B’rith under its president Ralph Hofmann on the three Frankfurt lodges and the B’nai B’rith lodges in Mannheim and Nuremberg. The research results have now been published in three volumes and are also available electronically. The aforementioned lodges are now being honored in the exhibition in the Römerhallen. The exhibition covers the period from the founding of the first Frankfurt B’nai B’rith lodge in 1888 to the closure and banning of all five of the above and all the other 100 or so B’nai B’rith lodges in the German Reich by the National Socialists in 1937. Some traces lead from the Frankfurt lodges to Switzerland, where one of the last presidents, Paul Pfefferkorn, found refuge with his family. One of the co-founders of the Frankfurt-Schönstedt lodge in 1958, which today leads an active and intense life, was Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, who is unforgettable in Switzerland. Photo: Ralph Hofmann and Mayor Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg.
