Jewish cemetery (Weyhers)

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The cemetery

The Jewish cemetery in Weyhers , a district of the Ebersburg community in the Fulda district in East Hesse , is a protected cultural monument and is located on a high plateau about 300 meters north of the village not far from the 3258 road in the direction of Dietershausen .

history

The oldest evidence of the existence of the Jewish cemetery in Weyhers comes from the year 1720. It was originally created by the prince abbots in Fulda Abbey for the deceased Jews of the Weyhers and Gersfeld offices . From 1866 at the latest, all Jews from what was then the Gersfeld district were buried on it, except those from the Tann district. At that time there were larger Jewish communities in Gersfeld , Hettenhausen , Weyhers, Wüstensachsen , Schmalnau and Poppenhausen, among others .

During National Socialism , many graves were destroyed and parts of the cemetery cleared. The contemporary witness Alfred Grünspecht (* 1920 in Wüstenhausen, † 2001 in New York) wrote in his memoirs: “When I visited the graves of my deceased parents and relatives a few days before my emigration (before November 1938) - the cemetery was in a beautifully landscaped area in Weyhers, on the mountain plateau - I found the iron gates wide open, deep wheel tracks led to the small basalt cone in the middle of the cemetery. Stones had been broken for road construction ”. After the Jewish cemetery in Fulda was closed in 1941, a few more burials were carried out at the Weyhers cemetery. About 600 burials took place between 1720 and 1942.

The cemetery was repeatedly desecrated after the Nazi era. In 2005, two young men (16 and 20 years old) knocked over gravestones and smeared them with National Socialist symbols. They were arrested and then confessed to the fact. In 2008 four 15 to 16 year old boys and girls knocked over some gravestones in “youthful arrogance”.

Tumulus

Barrows

Inside the cemetery there is a burial mound from the Bronze Age , which was probably excavated as early as the 19th century. In the 1920s, Fritz Luckhard reported that a fox lived in the excavation shafts. A second barrow outside the cemetery fence has been leveled so far through agricultural use that it can hardly be seen.

Others

  • There are pictures of the cemetery in the history book of the German school in Brussels.
  • Gerhild Birmann-Dähne deals with it in her exhibition House of Eternal Life .

literature

  • Rudolf Henkel in Rainer Erdmann (ed.): Weyhers .... our village, Rindt-Druckerei, Fulda 2012, pp. 259–263

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Miriam, wife of Juspa (1731) - Weyhers. Jewish graves in Hesse. (As of September 24, 2015). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  2. ^ Estate of the Grünspecht family , published by the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, accessed February 16, 2014
  3. ↑ Report in the Fuldaer Zeitung of August 28, 2008 , accessed on February 16, 2014
  4. ^ Article in Osthessen-News from October 27, 2008 , accessed on February 16, 2014
  5. ↑ Exhibition catalog (accessed on February 17, 2014)

Coordinates: 50 ° 29 ′ 36.3 "  N , 9 ° 47 ′ 52.4"  E