Shortly after their arrival in occupied Berlin in July 4, 1945, the United States military opened up their Chaplain Center in a villa on Unter den Eichen 78/79. It was an interfaith centre containing a synagogue as well as a Catholic and a Protestant church. Jewish religious services were conducted by Rabbi Louis Fischer (…1992) and Chief Cantor Estrongo Nachama.

The Chaplain Center moved to Hüttenweg 46 in 1957 – location of the present-day synagogue. It was used as an interfaith centre until the American forces left Berlin in 1994. In the autumn of 1999, Albert Mayer, then a member of the Jewish community’s board of representatives and later its head, took the initiative of establishing a new congregation there. Sukkat Schalom was consecrated on September 17, 1999, in the presence of three generations of the Nachama family – Chief Cantor Estrongo, Rabbi Andreas and Cantor Alexander Nachama. Officiating at the opening of the centre was Rabbi Nathan Peter Levinson, who had shared the pulpit as a Berlin rabbi in the early 1950s.

Source: "Jüdische Orte in Berlin", Andreas Nachama/Ulrich Eckhardt. Copyright by Nicolai Verlag

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