In hardly any other building is Berlin's Jewish history of the last hundred years as concentrated as in the Pestalozzistrasse Synagogue: built in 1912 by German Jews who refused to succumb to the pressure of assimilation and would not tolerate an organ in worship. After 1945, the synagogue became a symbol of this very liberal tradition. Nowhere else in the world is the service composed by Louis Lewandowski for cantor, organ, and mixed choir still held in its original form. Esther Slevogt traces the history of the synagogue and some of the people who shaped it. She tells for the first time what happened before 1938 and reports how the beleaguered Jewish community preserved their desecrated house of worship from destruction after 1938. Thus, a handful of survivors were able to make it the seed of new Jewish life in 1945. Includes an MP3 CD with liturgical music from the synagogue.