New Jewish Cemetery (Kolín)

New Jewish cemetery in Kolín

The New Jewish Cemetery (Czech "Nový židovský hřbitov") in Kolín (German Kolin, older also Cologne on the Elbe), a Czech community in the Okres Kolín district in the Central Bohemian region of Středočeský kraj , was laid out in 1886/87. The new Jewish cemetery in the Zálabí district on the right bank of the Elbe replaced the old Jewish cemetery in the old town.

history

The new Jewish cemetery was laid out in 1886/1887 after the capacity of the old Jewish cemetery was no longer sufficient. On March 15, 1945, the cemetery was hit and damaged during a bombing raid by the Allied air forces.

In 1989 the state confiscated a tail of the area for the construction of new houses, which reduced the area to 7198 m². An entrance gate and a ritual room next to it, which served as a prayer room, were demolished. The Torah shrine located there (Hebrew: ארון הקודש) was brought to the Northwood United Synagogue in Northwood near London in 1982, where it is still located today.

The cemetery

The cemetery, which now extends over 7000 m², is located on the right bank of the Elbe in the Zálabí district, not far from the city's two other cemeteries - the central Kolín cemetery and the Protestant cemetery. There are a little over 1000 tombstones on it , it is still in use.

There is a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust on the cemetery grounds. The initiative for this came from the last rabbi of Kolín, Richard Leder (rabbinate 1917 to 1953). It consists of an obelisk, flanked by eight panels with the names of 487 Jewish victims from the city of Kolín who were murdered in concentration camps. Symbolically, small amounts of earth from the ghetto and cemetery in Theresienstadt, as well as from Abschitz, Majdanek, Łódź and Warsaw were deposited on the monument.

The cemetery has been under the city's cultural heritage protection since 2000.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Články z domova. Kolín - Jeruzalém na Labi , Portal Czech Travel Press (“Association Tchéque des Journalistes et Écrivains du Tourisme”), online at: czechtravelpress.cz / ...
↑ ^a ^b ^c Nový židovský hřbitov , online at: cestyapamatky.cz /.../ novy ...
↑ Jiří Fiedler: Kolín , report on the Jewish community in Kolín, online at: holocaust.cz / ...
↑ Klaus-Dieter Alicke: Lexicon of the Jewish communities in the German-speaking area , 3 volumes, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2008, ISBN 978-3-579-08035-2 , here section Kolin (Bohemia) , in: Online version From the history of Jewish Communities in the German-speaking area , online at: jewische-gemeinden.de / ...