Jewish cemetery (Soltau)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Soltau Jewish Cemetery is a Jewish cemetery in Soltau ( Heidekreis district , Lower Saxony ). It is a protected cultural monument .

description

In the cemetery , which is located on Böningweg No. 7, there are nine gravestones or remains of gravestones (three stones with inscriptions and six fragments or bases) for Jews from Soltau and the surrounding area who died between 1721 and 1926. The original number of graves and the names of all those buried are no longer known today. Today the cemetery is only 138 m² from the former 219 m². The city of Soltau is responsible for maintenance.

history

The last burial in the Jewish cemetery took place in 1926. The deceased was the Soltau poor nurse and district head Simon Aron, after whom the Simon-Aron-Gang in downtown Soltau is named today. Aron left his money to the city of Soltau in order to secure the preservation of the Jewish cemetery. But the money was already confiscated in 1936 by the then mayor Willy Klapproth, and the cemetery was devastated. After the outbreak of the Second World War , tombstones were destroyed and stolen.

After the end of the war, in 1945 the merchant Otto Uebe had the remains of the cemetery collected and put up again at the old location. The arrangement of the tombstones did not correspond to the original, however, the space had also been reduced. Since the city wrongly assumed that the cemetery could be closed and thus removed 30 years after it was last occupied, i.e. in 1956, nothing was done to maintain it for decades. In 1952, the city architect Wilhelm Crome discovered nine remains of tombstones and three grave borders during a sighting. When it finally turned out that Jewish cemeteries have an eternal claim, it was partially repaired in 1953. The front part of the property at Böningweg 7 was sold to private individuals in the same year. It was not until June 1956 that the project "Elimination of the Jewish cemetery in the New Gardens" was put aside and the rear part of the property was also sold.

Discussions about the care and accessibility of the graves followed again and again later. As the neighboring properties were gradually sold in the following years, the Jewish cemetery was no longer open to the public. It was only accessible via a narrow path that ran over private property. From 1981 the cemetery was no longer shown on the official city map of the Lower Saxony state administration office. In 1987 a group of scouts dealt with the history of the cemetery and an exhibition was organized.

In 1993 the Jewish cemetery in Soltau was finally declared a cultural monument. In the same year, the city bought back the area where the remains of the cemetery are today. However, a planned public access was not implemented in the next few years either. It wasn't until 2002 that something happened again, when the city started the "Jewish Cemetery" project. In the course of this, the area was cleaned and surrounded with hedges. A path to the north was also laid out, but since no agreement was reached with the owner of the neighboring property, it ended as a dead end. In 2013 there was another attempt. The area was cleaned again and weeds removed. In September 2014, Mayor Wilhelm Ruhkopf announced that the city had acquired a strip of the neighboring property and laid a gravel path on it, making the cemetery open to the public again. The city takes on the maintenance of the site, for which the Jewish community in Hanover , which is responsible for Soltau, pays an obolus. The community also donated a metal gate that was set up at the entrance to the cemetery.

literature

  • In addition, there is documentation (photos and translations of all stones) that was made in 1989/1990 by the regional association / the central archive.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jewish cemetery open to the public again - article in the Böhme-Zeitung of September 12, 2014, p. 1
  2. ^ Herbert Obenaus (ed. In collaboration with David Bankier and Daniel Fraenkel): Historical manual of the Jewish communities in Lower Saxony and Bremen. Göttingen 2005, p. 1532
  3. ↑ Tina Pokern: Masel tov - Jewish cemetery available soon - Article with history and new developments in the Böhme-Zeitung of August 6, 2013, p. 3
  4. ↑ "I am very happy about this solution" - article in the Böhme-Zeitung of September 12, 2014, p. 3

Coordinates: 52 ° 59 ′ 19.9 "  N , 9 ° 50 ′ 45.7"  E