Jewish cemetery (Buttenheim)

Jewish cemetery in Buttenheim (2011)

The Jewish cemetery in Buttenheim in the Upper Franconian district of Bamberg is a Jewish burial site that was occupied from 1819 to 1938.

location

The 2150 m² cemetery, surrounded by a wall, is located around 1.5 km north of the center of Buttenheim, to the right of the road to Seigendorf on the Gratzau corridor at the edge of the forest.

history

Tahara House (2011)

Gravestone with Shofar (2011)

The presence of Jews in Buttenheim is proven from 1450. After the Thirty Years' War Jews settled there again. In 1667, the Lords of Stiebar allowed four Jewish families with a total of 16 people to settle on the ruins of the upper castle, which had been cremated during the Peasants' War . Later other families were able to move in, and a mikveh and a synagogue were built in the village in 1740 . In 1763, 44 Jewish families with around 200 people lived in Buttenheim. The deceased of the Jewish community were first buried in the Jewish cemetery in Zeckern . The plans that arose at the end of the 18th century to create a cemetery south of the town on Eggolsheimer Berg failed due to resistance from Baron von Seefried.

In 1819, the then community chairman Jizchak Reis donated a piece of land on which, with the help of the Hirschaid and Gunzendorf communities , a separate cemetery with a small Tahara house could finally be created. On March 2 of the same year, the first dead person, the late wife of the founder, Fradel Reis, was buried there. Members of the Jewish communities of Hirschaid and Gunzendorf also found their final resting place on the burial site, which was originally only surrounded by a hedge and a wire fence.

During industrialization in the 19th century, the number of Jewish residents in Buttenheim fell due to emigration to the cities. In 1890 there were still 27 Jews living in the village. In 1892 the Jewish communities of Hirschaid and Buttenheim were merged into one community. Around 1900 a collection had to be made to finance the renovation of the Tahara House and some of the graves in the Jewish cemetery. Of the 2,282.71 Reichsmarks earned (around 15,864 euros today), a considerable part (1,028 RM) came from the Buttenheim-based textile manufacturer Levi Strauss, who emigrated to San Francisco .

On the night of December 19-20, 1931, the cemetery was badly desecrated. A “ small estate agent from the neighboring town of Seigendorf who was close to the line of thought of the NSDAP ” had knocked over 67 gravestones and damaged some of them very badly. The event was condemned in a letter from the Archbishop's Ordinariate in Bamberg to the Bavarian State Association of the Central Association as well as in a rally and in a letter from the Dean's Office in Amlingstadt to the Israelite religious community in Buttenheim “from the point of view of Catholic ethics”.

In 1933, 18 Jewish people were still living in Buttenheim. Due to the consequences of the economic boycott and further reprisals, almost all Jewish residents of Buttenheim emigrated during the Nazi era . In 1937 the synagogue was sold to a brewery, and in 1938 the last burial took place in the Jewish cemetery. Six Jews from Buttenheim were able to emigrate to the United States and eleven to Great Britain . The Shoah were probably four born in Buttenheim or longer time in resident Jews victim.

The former synagogue was redesigned after the sale and used as a stable and warehouse. Today there are still two original outer walls on the building. In the Jewish cemetery, which has been surrounded by a wall for several years, there are now 13 rows of graves with a total of approx. 280 gravestones .

literature

Israel Schwierz: Stone evidence of Jewish life in Bavaria. A documentation . Ed. from the Bavarian State Center for Political Education . Munich 1988, pp. 200-201, ISBN 3-87052-393-X