Jewish cemetery (Erkelenz)

Partial view of the cemetery

The Jewish cemetery Erkelenz is located in Erkelenz in the district of Heinsberg ( North Rhine-Westphalia ). It is located on Neusser Straße opposite the parking deck at the train station.

After a former small Jewish community perished in the Middle Ages and Jews only settled in the city again in the second half of the 19th century, the Jewish cemetery was laid out in 1865 and expanded in 1893. The first burial took place in January 1869, the last during the Nazi era in September 1940. Presumably in 1943 the cemetery was desecrated, partially destroyed and had to be sold to the city of Erkelenz.

After the end of the Second World War , the city council decided in June 1946 to restore the cemetery. Today it is owned by the Mönchengladbach Jewish community and has 24 tombstones ( Mazewot ). Only the plinth is left on six other graves. 15 of the tombstones erected before 1940 are still preserved. Three of them no longer have an inscription, one of which was obviously knocked out with a chisel. The inscriptions are partly only in German and partly bilingual in German and Hebrew . Individual burials have taken place in the last few decades.

In the cemetery there is a memorial stone with the words: In memory of the dead Jewish citizens of the city of Erkelenz . On the street-side boundary wall of the cemetery there is, among other things, a notice board that indicates that the community secondary school Erkelenz-Mitte has taken over the sponsorship. The burial site is the third stop on the route against oblivion , which in Erkelenz refers to the Nazi tyranny. The entrance gate is locked.

Individual evidence

1. ^ About everything: Hubert Rütten, Traces of Life - Searching for Traces, Jewish Life in the former District of Erkelenz , Writings of the Heimatverein der Erkelenzer Lande Volume 22, Erkelenz 2008, pages 48 ff.

Web links

Commons : Jewish Cemetery  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Jewish cemetery Erkelenz in the epidat database of the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute for German-Jewish History
• Jüdischer Friedhof Erkelenz In: University of Heidelberg: Overview of all projects for the documentation of Jewish grave inscriptions in the area of ​​the Federal Republic of Germany. North Rhine-Westphalia.
• Monument description
• Entry on Jewish cemetery Neusser Strasse in Erkelenz in the database " KuLaDig " of the Rhineland Regional Association

Coordinates: 51 ° 5 ′  N , 6 ° 19 ′  E