Bad Münder Jewish cemetery

Bad Münder Jewish cemetery, entrance gate and information board, 2016

The Jewish cemetery in Bad Münder am Deister is a former Jewish burial place in the Hameln-Pyrmont district in Lower Saxony . The cemetery of the local Jewish community , originally laid out outside the city, is first documented in 1782. The last funeral took place in 1937.

Location and description

View of the cemetery area

The cemetery, enclosed by a fence and hedges, is located on Deisterallee in Bad Münder. The inner-town avenue leads from the center up to several health clinics on the slope of the Deister . The cemetery originally had a size of almost 2500 m². Up until the 1930s, only the smaller, eastern part of the site was used as a burial site, while the extensive western area was leased as garden land.

Today the cemetery, which was greatly reduced in size when it was restored in the 1960s, covers around 650 m². There are 28 tombstones from the years 1826 to 1917, which were originally from a larger collection.

history

time of the nationalsocialism

During the November pogrom of 1938 , the synagogue in Bad Münder was desecrated and devastated, and three Jews were deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp . After that, the Jewish community was forced to give up the unoccupied western part of the cemetery that was used as a garden. In 1938, the chairman of the local Jewish community sold it to a non-Jewish citizen from Bad Münder, who had already acquired the synagogue building that had been devastated by the pogrom. In 1939 there were 32 single and 7 double graves in the cemetery.

At the beginning of 1939 the mayor of Bad Münder asked the district administrator of the Springe district, Georg Mercker, to close the Jewish cemetery and have the tombstones cleared. He justified his demand by saying that the “cemetery is in an excellent location on the avenue after the Deister” and that “every walker, spa guest, inmate of the“ Deisterhort ”recreation home or KDF driver and every country year girl from the country year home on Deister at the cemetery must pass and have to be annoyed every time that it was ... possible to set up a Jewish cemetery in such a beautiful place ... ".

Closure and elimination

The district administrator agreed to this demand and in June 1939, without the mandatory hearing of the Jewish community, passed it on to the Hanoverian district president Rudolf Diels , who ordered the closure a short time later. With the circular of October 27, 1938, Diels had already worked towards closing Jewish cemeteries and no longer allowing burials. The graves should hygienic reasons after at least 30 years of time spent after the last funeral leveled be. In compliance with the decree, the ten existing Jewish cemeteries in the Springe district were closed by mid-1939, including the one in Bad Münder. Afterwards, burials took place in the Jewish cemetery in Lauenau . The mayor's plan to set up a small - bore shooting range on the grounds of the Jewish cemetery in Bad Münder was rejected by the district president because the last burial did not take place until 1937.

Gravestones with chipped gable tops

In 1941 the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland sold the eastern part of the Jewish cemetery, which still had gravestones, to the citizen of Bad Münders, who had already acquired the western part of the cemetery in 1938. In the purchase agreement, the buyer undertook to look after the cemetery for the remaining time it was in place (around 25 years), to grant access to relatives and to allow funerals.

At an unknown time after the purchase, the new owner cleared the tombstones and planted potatoes on the former cemetery grounds. The owner used most of the gravestones as stone slabs to support the sloping property. To make the panels fit together better, he knocked off the gable tops of the tombstones. Three small tombstones were used as the foundation of a garden shed. Seven large stones from double graves were probably smashed because of their unwieldiness.

The actions of the authorities and the new property owner contradicted the claim of the Jewish religion that cemeteries should exist forever and that the peace of the dead is inviolable.

Restoration

Entrance gate with Star of David

After the Second World War , the Lower Saxony State Association of Jewish Communities received part of the former cemetery grounds back and had it restored in 1961. 28 of the remaining tombstones were re-erected, but not in their original locations as they were no longer known.

In 2008 the fence and the cemetery gate were renewed. Since 2014 there has been an information board placed in front of the cemetery by the city of Bad Münder, the text of which was written by the Hamelin historian Bernhard Gelderblom . Along with the former synagogue building, the cemetery is the last structural evidence of Jewish life in Bad Münder.

Jewish cemeteries in the Weser Uplands

According to Hamelin historian Bernhard Gelderblom, the Jewish cemeteries in the Weser Uplands near Hameln were destroyed during the Nazi era in order to remove the last traces of Jewish life. This mostly happened during the November 1938 pogroms by local SA members who overturned the gravestones or damaged them with pickaxes. The stones were then used as building material, especially in rural areas, such as steps, stepping stones or foundation stones. It is not known whether the Jewish cemetery in Bad Münder was violently destroyed, as in other places. The traces of destruction on the tombstones that still exist today can be traced back to their use as building material.

literature

Siegfried Krinke: The Jewish population in the city of Bad Münder. In: Gerd Kastendieck (ed.): Der Söltjer. Forays through Bad Münder and the surrounding area. Bad Münder 1977, pp. 35-40.
Bernhard Gelderblom: The elimination of the Jewish cemeteries in the small town of Bad Münder (Springe district) and in the Coppenbrügge district (Hameln-Pyrmont district) - as examples of the interplay of official arbitrariness and personal greed. In: Working Group History of the Jews in the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen (ed.): Jews in Lower Saxony 1938–1945. Research approaches and research desiderata. Conference in Hanover 24. – 25. March 2011. Hanover 2011, pp. 62–64.

Web links

Commons : Jüdischer Friedhof Bad Münder - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Bad Münder. In: Overview of all projects for the documentation of Jewish grave inscriptions in the area of the Federal Republic of Germany ; here: Lower Saxony, University of Heidelberg
Bernhard Gelderblom : The Jewish cemetery in Bad Münder. Private website

Individual evidence

↑ From the history of the Jewish communities in Germany. Münder (Lower Saxony). In: Jüdische-Gemeinde.de ; Bernhard Gelderblom: The elimination of the Jewish cemeteries in the small town of Bad Münder ... (see under literature); Siegfried Krinke: The Jewish population in the city of Bad Münder. (see under literature).

^ Bernhard Gelderblom: On the history of the Jews in Hameln and in the area. The Jewish cemeteries. ( Memento of the original from June 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Private website. @1@ 2

^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The Jewish cemeteries of the Weserbergland. ( Memento of the original from May 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Private website. @1@ 2

52.20159 9.46819Coordinates: 52 ° 12 ′ 5.7 ″ N , 9 ° 28 ′ 5.5 ″ E

[1] From the history of the Jewish communities in Germany. Münder (Lower Saxony). In: Jüdische-Gemeinde.de ; Bernhard Gelderblom: The elimination of the Jewish cemeteries in the small town of Bad Münder ... (see under literature); Siegfried Krinke: The Jewish population in the city of Bad Münder. (see under literature).