New Jewish Cemetery (Gütersloh)
| New Jewish cemetery | |
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 Entrance to the New Jewish Cemetery |
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| Data | |
| place |
 Germany
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| Construction year | 1866 |
| Coordinates | 51 ° 54 '33 " N , 8 ° 21' 57.3" E |
The New Jewish Cemetery is a Jewish cemetery in the East Westphalian district town of Gütersloh , North Rhine-Westphalia. In 1866 he replaced the old Jewish cemetery on the road to Herzebrock . The youngest grave in the New Jewish Cemetery dates from 1946. The cemetery was added to the list of architectural monuments in Gütersloh in 1988 with the number A 051 .
The old Jewish cemetery
Since 1565 Jews lived in Gütersloh, which at that time belonged to the Rheda rule . In 1712, some of them turned to Countess Christi (a) ne Marie with a request for their own burial site. Until then, Jewish families had been allowed to use the Rheda cemetery.
However, it was not until 1722 that the request was granted. The cemetery in Rheda was meanwhile overcrowded. When a female member of the Gütersloh parish died and could not be buried due to the occupancy situation, the parish, which at the time consisted of at least ten families, wrote a petition to the countess. This had a barren, sandy and spruce- overgrown property near the Neue Mühle (today opposite the Johannisfriedhof) identified as a burial site, which from then on was popularly called "Judenbrink". " Brink " is the name for a hill in East Westphalia. Until 1890, the community paid a rent for the use of the property, before it passed into community ownership.
Ten gravestones from the Old Jewish Cemetery have survived, some of them heavily weathered . As far as the inscriptions are still legible, they are reminiscent of Jews from Gütersloh who died after 1855. The parcel has been designated as a monument since 1988 with the number A 178 .
Creation and use of the New Cemetery
In 1867, 75 of the 4,104 Gütersloh citizens were Jewish. After the old cemetery was occupied, a new burial site was planned. Since the old one, much more so at the time than now, was far from the city, the parishioners wanted a cemetery that was easier to reach.
Under the chairman of the municipality, Josef Herzberg, the burial site now known as the “New Cemetery” was laid out in 1866 in an open field away from Böhmerstraße in the area of the Pavenstädt peasantry , but close to the core town of Gütersloh . Later this was enclosed with a wall and a wrought iron gate was set up on the street side. The access from the street to the graves was planted with acacias and oaks like an alley .
The first graves were dug for Viktor Ising and Julius Langbein in 1866. The last burial of the community took place in 1941, when the 85-year-old Joseph Meinberg was buried.
The youngest graves are, however, two children's graves from 1946. Mordchai Ioine Kuperszmit and Szmul Elia Kringiel, two sons of Polish slave laborers who were transported from a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Lippstadt (external command I at the LEM Lippstädter Eisen- und Metallwerke) were liberated by American soldiers in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Kaunitz and then lived for several years in the Verl office . Mordchai Ioine was five months old, Szmul Elia only six days.
The New Cemetery today
66 graves have been preserved in the New Jewish Cemetery, some of which have additional memorial stones to commemorate the Holocaust . In 1933 58 Jews lived in Gütersloh, 27 of them were killed in concentration camps. After the National Socialist marginalization and the annihilation of the Jewish community in 1943, no new community emerged in Gütersloh. The cemetery complex is therefore looked after by the city of Gütersloh with the assistance of the regional association of Jewish communities in Dortmund.
Most of the tombstones are made of sandstone and have inscriptions on both sides: to the east, to Jerusalem , in Hebrew , on the other side in Latin. The grave sites are covered with ivy . In addition to the usual gravestone symbols , the cluster of the butterfly symbol (sometimes combined with a caterpillar ) is worth mentioning, which is found on twelve gravestones and stands for the immortality and resurrection of the soul .
The cemetery is now in the middle of a residential area. It is not open to the public, but can be visited on guided tours. During such a tour, non-Jewish men are also required to wear a head covering ( kippah or hat) out of respect for the dead .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jürgen Kindler, Wolfgang Lewe: Jewish cemeteries in Rheda and their history between 1600 and 1969 . Ed .: District of Gütersloh (= In: Heimatjahrbuch Kreis Gütersloh 1985 ). Flöttmann-Verlag, Gütersloh 1984.
- ↑ Yehuda Barlev: Jews and Jewish community in Gütersloh 1671-1943 . Ed .: City of Gütersloh. Flöttmann-Verlag, Gütersloh 1988, ISBN 3-87231-042-9 .
- ↑ Helmut Gatzen: Jewish cemeteries. A stone on the grave as a reminder . Ed .: Kreis Gütersloh (= In: Heimatjahrbuch Kreis Gütersloh 1989 ). Flöttmann-Verlag, Gütersloh 1988.
- ^ Anne Frank working group, editor Hans-Dieter Musch : The children's graves of Gütersloh. Students on the trail of Jewish female forced laborers. A work as part of the “German History” school competition for the Federal President's Prize . Ed .: City of Gütersloh. Flöttmann, Gütersloh 1993.
- ↑ Jochen Singer: The effects of the "Reichskristallnacht" in the old Wiedenbrück district . Ed .: Kreis Gütersloh (= In: Heimatjahrbuch Kreis Gütersloh 1994 ). Flöttmann-Verlag, Gütersloh 1993.
- ^ Matthias E. Borner, Detlef Güthenke: City Guide Gütersloh . A guide through a young city with a long history . 2nd Edition. tpk-Regionalverlag, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-936359-43-5 .