Jewish cemetery (Diespeck)

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Older part of the Jewish cemetery in Diespeck, 2011

The Jewish cemetery (also called Judensäcker ) in Diespeck in the Neustadt an der Aisch-Bad Windsheim district in Central Franconia is a Jewish burial site that was occupied from 1786 to 1938.

location

The 2100 m² cemetery, surrounded by a massive sandstone wall, is about 1.5 kilometers east of Diespeck on the road to the Dettendorf district. The key for the iron gate is available from the Diespeck town hall or from the cemetery supervisor.

history

Tahara house and older tombstones in the Jewish cemetery in Diespeck, 2011

The history of the Jewish community in Diespeck goes back to the early 17th century. The first known mention from 1616 mentions a Jew who owned a house in the village. In 1709 nine Jewish families were counted, in 1771 there were already 27 Jewish families in Diespeck. The deceased of the community were initially buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ullstadt, about 15 kilometers away . On March 7, 1786, the Diespecker Jews received a purchase permit for a "field of the poorest sandy soil", which was "deserted for over ten years, and consequently was of no use to the tenor ." Immediately after the property was acquired, a cemetery wall and a Tahara house were built together with the Jewish community in Pahres , which were renovated in 1862. The first tombstone from 1786 has been preserved and is located south of the building. The traditional name of the cemetery is Judensäcker . The term refers to both the name of the church and the Hebrew word secher ( Hebrew זכר), which means remembrance , commemoration .

War memorial for the Jewish fallen in World War I, 2011

After the maximum number of Jewish residents had been reached in Diespeck with 270 people (32.9% of a total of 820) in 1837, the number then fell significantly due to emigration to the cities. A large number of Jewish families moved to the neighboring Neustadt an der Aisch during the second half of the 19th century . The Jewish community in Pahres was already dissolved in the 1870s. The now much smaller Jewish community of Diespeck was incorporated into the younger community in Neustadt an der Aisch in 1915. The deceased Jews from both places continued to be buried in Diespeck.

On August 19, 1923 (14 days after a spectacular appearance by Adolf Hitler on the occasion of the "German Day" on August 5 in Neustadt an der Aisch) a Jewish war memorial created by the stonemason Heinrich Kraft was inaugurated in the Jewish cemetery of 38 members of the Neustadt-Diespeck Jewish community who died in World War I. On this day the Fürth district rabbi Siegfried Behrens (1876–1942) spoke to those present: “[...] As long as the German people honor their fallen sons, they cannot eliminate those who fought in their ranks, it cannot divide those according to race and religion who have shared the same fate ”. The Neustadt SPD city council (from 1919 to 1924), second member of the board of the Neustadt-Diespeck Jewish community and initiator of the Gustav Dingfelder (* 1876 in Diespeck) war memorial, pointed out the high number of Jewish war participants in the 98 soul community.

In July 1930, several tombstones were knocked over and damaged in the cemetery. The cemetery was also desecrated during the Nazi era . After the last burial in 1938, the cemetery wall was torn down. By the end of 1938, all Jews from Neustadt and Diespeck had left their homeland. A majority of them fell into the extermination camps the Holocaust victims. After the Second World War , local residents had to rebuild the cemetery wall on the orders of the US military government .

Serious devastation occurred on February 24, 2007 when two men tore a total of 63 gravestones and the 11 memorial stones of the war memorial from their anchoring, knocked them over and partly broke them. The perpetrators, who were 17 and 18 years old at the time of the crime, who belonged to the right-wing extremist scene, had already carried out an arson attack on an apartment building in Bad Windsheim in October 2006 with two other young people . The youth chamber of the Nuremberg-Fürth regional court imposed prison sentences of between three years and five years and eight months for both offenses . The overturned graves, some of which were irreparably damaged, were restored by September 2007. A total of 327 tombstones have been preserved in the Jewish cemetery in Diespeck.

Tahara house

literature

Gravestone from the 1920s in the Jewish cemetery in Diespeck, 2011

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Diespeck - Jewish cemetery . Alemannia Judaica , as of February 12, 2011.
  2. ^ Diespeck - Jewish history / synagogue and Jewish school . Alemannia Judaica , as of November 2, 2011.
  3. ↑ Ilse Vogel: Information board at the entrance to the cemetery . As of October 2011.
  4. ↑ Neustadt an der Aisch - Jewish history / synagogue . Alemannia Judaica , as of February 12, 2011.
  5. ↑ a b Ilse Vogel: The desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Diespeck . As of February 12, 2011.
  6. ^ Wolfgang Mück: Nazi stronghold in Middle Franconia: The völkisch awakening in Neustadt an der Aisch 1922–1933. Verlag Philipp Schmidt, 2016 (= Streiflichter from home history. Special volume 4); ISBN 978-3-87707-990-4 , pp. 162-164 and 270.
  7. ↑ Jewish cemeteries in Bavaria - Jewish cemetery Diespeck . House of Bavarian History , as of November 2, 2011.
  8. ↑ "Kill as many people as possible" . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 5, 2008.

Coordinates: 49 ° 35 ′ 46 ″  N , 10 ° 38 ′ 36 ″  E