Jewish cemetery Graz

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Jewish cemetery with new ceremonial hall (2009)

The Jewish Cemetery Graz is a Jewish cemetery founded in 1864/65 in what is now the Graz district of Wetzelsdorf . Since that time it has served as the main burial place of the Jewish community in Graz. In 1910 the ceremonial hall of the Graz architect Alexander Zerkowitz was inaugurated on the cemetery grounds. During the November pogroms of 1938 , the morgue was set on fire and destroyed on November 10, 1938. The site was expropriated and sold to the city of Graz. With the exception of the destroyed ceremonial hall and a few graves, the cemetery remained intact until the end of the war and was restituted to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde in 1946 . On November 11, 1991, a new ceremonial hall was opened following the "year of remembrance / commemoration 1938/88".

history

Foundation phase

After the establishment of the Israelitische Corporation, the first association of Jews living in Graz, on September 20, 1863, committee member Leopold Ritter submitted an application to the Graz magistrate and the Styrian Lieutenancy to establish a cemetery for the Graz Jews. Up until then, Jews were not allowed to bury their deceased in the region, so the bodies had to be transported to Hungary . In addition to hygienic problems, the Israelite Corporation also had to bear the enormous transport and funeral costs that were incurred when poor Jews died. After there were already Jewish cemeteries in Linz and St. Pölten , the magistrate and the Lieutenancy gave the application a positive assessment in November / December 1863. After the responsible Imperial and Royal State Ministry had approved the construction of a cemetery on January 10, 1864, Leopold Ritter was commissioned to look for the property.

For the first time, on May 6, a commission to determine the cemetery area met, which on October 30, 1864, declared the property selected by Ritter in Wetzelsdorf on the Graz city limits (in Alte Poststrasse ) to be suitable. After the approval of the planned property by the Lieutenancy, the property was acquired by the Israelite Cooperation on November 29, 1864. The first burial in the northern part of the cemetery took place on July 14, 1865.

The cemetery between 1865 and 1938

The enactment of the Basic State Law in 1867 caused the establishment of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Graz (IKG), which was responsible for the sole representation of Jews in Graz and the surrounding area. The IKG subsequently took over all the documents and rights of the Israelite Cooperation. In return, the founders of the Israelite Cooperation were given the right to erect a memorial column and the free choice of place when their family graves were erected for everlasting times. Leopold Ritter was given the privilege of first choice.

In 1869 the “Association for Israelite Nursing for Men and Funerals” was founded to support the bereaved of a deceased person and the seriously ill. The association was approved by the Styrian Lieutenancy after the statutes were changed in 1871 as " Chewra-Kadischa - Association for pious and charitable works". The IKG transferred the administration of the cemetery to the association and fixed the cooperation in the form of a long lease in 1884 in the land register.

The expansion of the cemetery was approved by the Graz district administration in 1901. On June 25, 1902, a piece of land adjacent to the south was legally owned by the IKG, but the already approved extension was canceled by the Lieutenancy that same year. In 1906, the IKG submitted an application for the construction of a morgue, which was granted to the Eggenberg community on the condition that a strip of land between Alte Poststrasse and the morgue was assigned. The morgue of the Graz architect Alexander Zerkowitz with an apartment for the guard was inaugurated on September 25, 1910.

National Socialism and the Post-War Period

In 1938, the cemetery became part of the city of Graz when the municipality of Wetzelsdorf was incorporated into Graz. During the November pogrom , the ceremonial hall was set on fire and destroyed on November 10, 1938 at 11 a.m. The medieval Jewish gravestones built into the wall of the hall , which were recovered from the demolition material of Graz Castle in 1853/54 , were destroyed in the process. In 1940/41 the cemetery area was "aryanized" and sold to the city of Graz. As early as the spring of 1940, Graz was registered as " Jew-free " after the eviction and deportation of the Jewish residents . Since the Styrian state curator had not attested any monument preservation prerequisites for preservation due to the late foundation, the Jewish cemetery in Graz was threatened with the abandonment and utilization of the tombstones. Nevertheless, with the exception of the ceremonial hall and a few graves, the cemetery remained almost undamaged. The gravestones were not used as in other Styrian communities.

Few Jews returned to Graz after the end of World War II. The former 2,500-member congregation was no longer able to match the pre-war personnel. Following the application by the IKG for the restitution of "Aryanized" properties, the Graz municipal council decided on June 15, 1946 to return the cemetery. The adjacent property, which was originally intended for the expansion of the cemetery, was set aside in 1950. Since there was no need to expand the cemetery due to the massively reduced community, the property was sold in 1954. In the post-war period, numerous murdered relatives of the returned family members were immortalized on the tombs of the interwar period. The bodies of Hungarian Jews who were murdered or died of exhaustion on a death march in the direction of Mauthausen concentration camp in March / April 1945 after their work as forced laborers in the construction of the south-east wall were also buried in two graves .

After the “year of commemoration 1938/88”, the city of Graz commissioned the architects Jörg and Ingrid Mayr to redesign the destroyed ceremonial hall in January 1988. Representatives of the city of Graz and the state of Styria finally commissioned the architects with the implementation of the new building, which was handed over to the IKG on November 11, 1991.

At the end of April 1999, 12 tombstones were smeared with anti-Semitic and National Socialist symbols and slogans.

In 2010, the neglected condition of the Jewish cemetery (overturned gravestones, overgrowths, various damage, etc.) was criticized in the media.

literature

Individual evidence

The main source of the article was the article Beth Hachajim - The Jewish Cemetery of Graz by Heimo Halbrainer.

  1. ↑ IKG Graz - History of the (Graz) Jews ( Memento from February 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ hagalil.com - Graz: Jewish cemetery desecrated.
  3. Jump up ↑ Jewish cemetery , accessed on May 30, 2018

Coordinates: 47 ° 3 ′ 30.1 ″  N , 15 ° 24 ′ 51.5 ″  E