BERLIN, Aug 31: Germany’s biggest synagogue reopened on Friday after a major restoration, in a defiant symbol of the rebirth of Jewish life in the city where the Nazis planned the Holocaust.

A special ceremony was held at the century-old, red-brick building in east Berlin which narrowly avoided being destroyed on Kristallnacht — the night in 1938 when Adolf Hitler’s followers torched Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship.

More than 1,000 guests including elderly Holocaust survivors confined to wheelchairs entered the synagogue past airport-style metal detectors and dozens of police officers, some armed with automatic weapons.

A few gasped as they saw the refurbished main sanctuary, pointing to lovingly repainted frescoes, new stained glass windows and gleaming chandeliers.

Leading the service was Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski, a native of Belarus who came to Berlin in 2000 as part of an influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union that has made Germany one of the fastest growing Jewish communities in the world. He dedicated the reopening to the members of the Rykestrasse synagogue congregation who were murdered in the Holocaust.—AFP