Jewish Museum of Merano

Housed in the basement rooms of the synagogue, the museum offers visitors a chronological account of the history of the Community and its contribution to the growth of the city. It concentrates initially on the major development of the late 19th Century, based on the health tourism business and the sojourn of prominent personalities from the world of culture and politics. A second section is dedicated to the years of racial persecution and the Holocaust, the arrival of Jewish refugees from Germany, the laws of 1938 and the decree of expulsion of foreign Jews, and the deportations that began in September 1943. The museum also covers the events immediately after the war, when many survivors found temporary shelter in the sanatorium of Merano.