Herchweiler in the Remigiusland was originally a holding of the Bishopric of Reims , although in ecclesiastical organization , it belonged to the Archbishopric of Mainz . Going by the principle of '' cuius regio , eius religio '' , the inhabitants were forced to convert to Lutheranism beginning in 1523 as required by the ducal administration , but then in 1588 , on Count Palatine Johannes I 's orders , everyone had to convert to Calvinism . After the Thirty Years ' War , freedom of choice in religion was theoretically possible , though Herchweiler 's Christian inhabitants remained overwhelmingly Reformed ( Calvinist ) . In 1818 came the Protestant Union , in which the Lutheran and Calvinist churches merged . While Catholics were once more a fifth of the population in the early 19th century , even when the Prussian section of the village was counted , their share of the population has since then shrunk to a bit more than a tenth . From the Middle Ages onwards , the village 's Christian inhabitants belonged to the Church of Konken . The Catholic Christians nowadays belong to the Church of Kusel . Jews likely settled in what was later to be the section of the village in the Saarland beginning in the early 16th century , formed their own worship community and as of 1790 owned a small house of worship , known locally as the '' Judenschule '' ( “ Jews ’ School ” ) . Next to this in the early 19th century was a small mikveh . Like all mikva’ot in Germany , this was no longer in use by the late 19th century . The Jewish community buried its dead at the Jewish graveyard in Thallichtenberg . As early as the late 19th century , the number of Jewish citizens in Herchweiler began to shrink markedly , reflecting a general trend throughout the Western Palatinate . After 1933 and the onset of the Third Reich , only three Jewish families still lived in the village . They were forbidden to practise their religion , and the municipality had the house of worship torn down in 1937 because of “ disrepair ” , on orders from the state . While the village 's Jews may have been subject to the various hardships to which all Jews in Nazi Germany fell victim , there were no excesses in Herchweiler on Kristallnacht ( 9 – 10 November 1938 ) . Three Jewish citizens in the village survived . Today , there are no longer any Jews living in Herchweiler
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Herchweiler