Floss

FLOSS, village in Bavaria, Germany. In 1685 a group of Jewish cloth merchants received a charter to settle and build on an unoccupied hill. Four houses were built in 1687 and the Jewish "colony" (juedische Kolonie), as it was called then, had 12 houses by 1712. In 1721 a synagogue was built. The community (referred to as "Judenberg" by contemporaries) retained its rights of self-government and jurisdiction well into the 19^th century. When the government in 1819 ordered the incorporation of the Jewish community within the village according to the 1813 Bavarian edict (see *Bavaria), the Christian villagers protested, and in 1824 the Jewish community was again separated. It was totally incorporated in the village in 1869. There were 200 Jews living in Floss in 1799, 391 in 1840, 205 in 1871, and 19 in 1933. Floss served as a religious center for the Jews of the neighboring villages. On Kristallnacht (November 1938) the synagogue (consecrated in 1817) was burned down and the rabbi's house and communal center were ransacked. No Jews returned after the war. Yehoseph *Schwarz, pioneer Jewish geographer of Ereẓ Israel, was born in Floss.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.