International Jewish Cemetery Project
International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies

Print

Coat of arms of Neckarsulm.49°12' N 9°14' ENeckarsulm is a city near Stuttgart in the Heilbronn district. 2004 population: 27,296. The rivers Neckar and Sulm join there.

Cemetery photo. photoProbbaly, a Jewish community existed in the 13th century. Severe damage to the city in 1945 obliterated all traces of its Jewish history because the former "Judengasse" (Jew Alley) no longer exists. The Jewish cemetery used in the Middle Ages was probably in Neudenau. Around 1550 or 1600, a separate cemetery on Stadtteil Neuberg / Waldenberg (parcel 4739, near the present town cemetery in the district Neuberg, area 31.92 a) was used to the 19th century. Also used by the surrounding communities of Kochendorf and Oedheimshared, it was completely destroyed in 1942.  What remains of the Jewish cemetery adjacent to today's municipal burial ground was destroyed completely in 1938. Its gravestones mostly were used as paving stones/road construction. After 1945, a park with few surviving gravestones and mounds of battered fragments was created. The former mortuary remains. photos and map. [Mar 2013]

74172 Baden-Württemberg (Gerz, Peters).

DISTRICT: Heilbronn.
LOCATION OF CEMETERY:
Kalbenstrasse adjoining the City general cemetery (Detail) and Concentration camp cemetery Kochendorf: see last Note below.
IN USE: From around the middle of the 16th or 1st half 17th century until presumably 1920.
NUMBER OF GRAVESTONES: 13 gravestones plus a few gravestone fragments. Oldest remaining gravestone dated 1659, most recent dated 1759.
DOCUMENTATION:
  • 1989 photographs of all gravestones with mapping of graves by Zentralarchiv.
  • 1991 cemetery documentation including above photographs by the Office for Historic Monuments (Landesdenkmalamt ed. Frowald Gil Hüttenmeister).
  • Numerous photographs of individual gravestones and general cemetery views in Alemannia Judaica.
PUBLICATIONS: NOTES:
  • The Jewish community of Neckarsulm presumably used the cemeteries in Heilbronn respectively in Neudenau for burials during the Middle Ages.
  • This cemetery was also used by the surrounding Jewish communities of Kochendorf and Oedheim.
  • The cemetery was completely destroyed in 1942 and the gravestones used largely for road building purposes. In the post-war period a park was created where the cemetery had been and where the few remaining gravestones and fragments were placed (Hahn 1988, page 240). The former mortuary is still in existence.
  • Concentration camp Cemetery: Kochendorf, now incorporated in Neckarsulm, was the location of an infamous concentration camp: Konzentrationslager Eisbär, one of the outposts of the Konzentrationslager Natzweiler-Struthof, established in 1944. It held up to 1700 prisoners who were marched by the SS to the Dachau concentration camp on the Death March in 1945 to evade the advancing US army. It is estimated that more than 400 of the prisoners died on the march. This concentration camp also had its own cemetery KZ-Friedhof, Amorbach in Neckarsulm. At that time this locality was in the back of beyond. Under the supervision of the French war graves commission lengthy re-burials took place. In 1953 the approximate cemetery area was enclosed by a wall and a cross was erected, which, in the first place, only referred to the deaths of 390 people during WW2, without spelling out the actual cause of death. This was rectified in 1983 when a new information board was affixed. No trace of the original concentration camp remains.
SOURCES: University of Heidelberg and Alemannia Judaica.
[Researched and translated from German August 2008]

To see information and photographs of individual gravestones in cemeteries in Baden-Wuerttemberg, click on this link and follow the directions on that page.