Jewish cemetery Obervorschütz

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The Jewish cemetery in Obervorschütz , a district of the north Hessian town of Gudensberg in the Schwalm-Eder district , served from 1727 to 1935 as a burial place for the members of the Jewish community of Gudensberg and its branches in neighboring villages.

Location and opportunities to visit

The cemetery is about 400 meters west of the village of Obervorschütz at the end of today's Friedenstrasse, about halfway to Hillemühle, and about 2 km east of Werkel . The cemetery is open to the public, with the exception of the Sabbath (Friday evening to Saturday evening) and Jewish holidays (information at the cemetery entrance). The key to the cemetery gate can be borrowed from the Gudensberg city administration.

Plant and facility

Jewish cemetery in Obervorschütz

Around 1725 the Jewish community of Gudensberg and its branch community of Obervorschütz acquired a piece of land on a slight hill west of Obervorschütz in order to create a cemetery there. Since this piece, at the southwest corner of today's cemetery, was too stony, another 4 acres were bought very soon . This cemetery, which was lined with fir trees around 1860 and covers a total area of ​​1.32 hectares, then served as a burial place for the Jewish community of Gudensberg with its branches in Obervorschütz, Maden , Dorla, Lohne , Riede and Kirchberg . Until the second half of the 19th century, the cemetery was also occupied by the Jewish communities Felsberg (with the branch communities Altenburg , Gensungen and Neuenbrunslar ) and Niedenstein as well as by Jewish deceased from Cappel , Obermöllrich , Züschen and Elben . After their own cemeteries were established in Niedenstein (1832) and Felsberg (after 1860), the dead from these communities were no longer buried in Obervorschütz.

Gravesites

A first headstone index was made by the district rabbi Mordechai Wetzlar (1801–1878) and countersigned in 1875 by the then Gudensberg cantor M. Lilienfeld. In August 1937, Baruch Wormser from Grebenstein created an exact gravestone register. He found around 425 tombstones . The oldest, 22 at that time, are at the foot of the hill and date from 1727 onwards. The first 275 graves were numbered; in addition there were 150 graves in orderly rows in the northwestern part from the 20th century, which were no longer numbered. Until 1859, the inscriptions are exclusively Hebrew . Only then did German lettering appear occasionally, although the inscriptions were mainly Hebrew until 1897. After that they are more often also in German. The last burial took place in 1935.

According to the 2007 directory edited by the “Commission for the History of the Jews in Hesse” , there are still 388 gravestones in Obervorschütz, dating from 1727 to 1935.

desecration

On October 12, 2003, the cemetery was desecrated. 42 tombstones in the entrance area, both sandstone goal posts and the information sign at the entrance were sprayed with swastikas, SS runes and Nazi slogans in red spray paint. The perpetrators were never identified.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Documentation of the Jewish cemeteries in Hesse .

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 9 ′ 38.9 ″  N , 9 ° 20 ′ 24 ″  E