Jewish cemetery (Twistringen)
The Jewish cemetery Twistringen is a fairly well-preserved Jewish cemetery in Twistringen ( Diepholz district , Lower Saxony ). It is a protected cultural monument .
description
The approx. 600 m² cemetery is located north of the Twistringen core area on the “Zur Poggenmühle” street. The cemetery is on the road to Binghausen in the middle of fields on the edge of a wood.
There are a total of 47 very differently designed tombstones or tombstone remains (fragments, bases, torsos). For the most part, these are extremely beautiful and artistically designed tombstones, which bear witness to the artistic will and the artistic creative ability of the respective stonemason . 46 tombstones or their remains are intended for Jewish grave sites and one tombstone for a collective grave from the time of the Second World War (or shortly afterwards) for "Three Russian Prisoners of War " (as the inscription on the granite tombstone ).
history
The small Jewish community , to which the Jews from Heiligenloh and Ehrenburg also belonged, must have established their cemetery near the road to Harpstedt before 1805. The oldest datable tombstone does not document a Jewish burial until 1839. But the Twistring Jewish cemetery is already marked on a map from 1805 (by Lecoq ) as the “Jewish cemetery”.
The last Jewish burial in the Twistringen cemetery took place in 1939. The youngest Jewish gravestone, however, documents the year of death in 1935.
Destruction
The Twistringer Jewish Cemetery is an example of major destruction, vandalism and desecration of graves . Such incidents occurred on June 23, 1983 and July 21, 1983. What is striking is the high number of damaged or destroyed gravestones that can no longer be repaired:
- a tombstone was put back together from the only partially found fragments
- three grave slabs have broken through, only part of the inscription remains
- The upper parts of nine gravestones were broken off, so that only “stumps”, plinths or even poor remains remain in the subsurface
- two inscription plates are missing
- four tombstones were broken through; they could be put together again - without the damage leaving any major traces - (break lines remain visible)
literature
- Lydia Funke-Westermann u. Friedrich Kratzsch : Respected and ostracized. Twistringen and his Jews 1933–1943. Harpstedt 1985; 2nd, revised edition 1990, 62 pp.
- Heinz-Hermann Böttcher: The Jewish cemetery in Twistringen - documentation. (Self-published typescript printing), Syke 2003, 120 pp.
- Nancy Kratochwill-Gertich et al. Antje C. Naujoks: Twistringen. In: Herbert Obenaus (ed. In collaboration with David Bankier and Daniel Fraenkel): Historical manual of the Jewish communities in Lower Saxony and Bremen , Volumes 1 and 2 (1668 pp.), Göttingen 2005, pp. 1475–1482
Web links
- Twist rings. In: Overview of all projects for the documentation of Jewish grave inscriptions in the area of the Federal Republic of Germany ; here: Lower Saxony
- Twist rings. In: Jewish regional history in the district of Diepholz.
- therein: Jewish cemetery Twistringen, (right column, left, 2nd from above)
- Verdener Familienforscher eV: cemetery of the synagogue community Twistringen
Barenburg | Barnstorf | Bassum | Diepholz | Lemförde-Quernheim | Sulingen | Syke | Twistringen | Wagenfeld
Coordinates: 52 ° 48 ′ 46.5 " N , 8 ° 38 ′ 34.7" E