Chemnitz twinned with Kiryat Bialik
Israeli delegation as guests - on 26 October, 2.30 pm tram naming ceremony at Adelsberg depot - 4 pm ceremony with signing in the city council chamber
On Wednesday, 26 October, a delegation from the Israeli city of Kirjat Bialik will be in Chemnitz to seal the twinning agreement between the two cities. Kiryat Bialik will be Chemnitz's twelfth twin town.
The delegation includes the Mayor of Kiryat Bialik, Eli Dukorski, Deputy Mayor Dr Revital Shurtz-Svirsky, City Councillor Anat Warmbrand and City Councillor Tzach Nachmani.
2.30 p.m. Mayor Sven Schulze welcomes the delegation to the tram depot in Adelsberg, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Straße 186, where a tram will be christened Kirjat Bialik to mark the new town twinning.
The official agreement will be signed at 4 p.m. in a ceremony in the city council chamber in the town hall, Markt 1 (with invited guests). The signing marks the first time in 23 years that Chemnitz has entered into a new city partnership. In future, cooperation will focus on culture, business, sustainability, education, sport, security and, in particular, the participation of young people.
Representatives of the media are invited to attend the meetings.
Please register in advance by 3 p.m. on 24 October (please use the registration form attached).
In September 2022, the Chemnitz City Council decided that Chemnitz would enter into a city partnership with Kiryat Bialik in Israel. Prior to this, a delegation from Chemnitz visited Kiryat Bialik in spring 2022 to get to know the city and get the town twinning off the ground. This was preceded by a regular exchange between the city representatives. Among other things, the mayor of Kiryat Bialik visited Chemnitz in 2018 for the Days of Jewish Culture and gave an opening speech. There were also many visits by artists from Israel to Chemnitz and groups from Chemnitz to Israel, for example from music schools and at chess tournaments.
Civil society contacts and cultural links between Kiryat Bialik and Chemnitz have existed since 2009, initiated primarily by the Jewish community with Dr Ruth Röcher and Prof Rafael Wertheim.
Kiryat Bialik
Kiryat Bialik (kiryat means small town in Hebrew) is located in the north of Israel. The city currently has a population of around 40,000 and is growing, with several thousand new residents arriving every year. The town is located north-east of the city of Haifa and is part of its metropolitan area. Kiryat Bialik has a total area of 8.2 square kilometres and borders the Tel Afek nature reserve to the north-east, where remains from the Crusader era can still be found.
Kiryat Bialik was granted city rights in 1976 as the town continued to grow. Since then, the town has welcomed immigrants from over 65 countries, most recently from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia. Today's city was founded in 1934 by German immigrants. It was the first settlement of German freelancers in Israel. They received the land from the Jewish National Fund for Israel and farmed and cultivated it themselves. The settlement was initially called the "German Immigrant Neighbourhood", but was named after the Israeli national poet Chaim Nachman Bialik after his death in the same year.
The first settlers to settle in Kiryat Bialik in 1924 were Ephraim and Sabina Katz, immigrants from Romania who had purchased the land. One of their houses, the Beit Katz ("Katz House"), has been preserved to this day and was handed over to the town for public use in 1959. Today it houses a local history museum run by volunteers.