DISTRICT: Holzminden.
LOCATION OF CEMETERY: Am Mühlentor close to a parking lot on the shore of the river Weser.
IN USE: First recorded in 1677 until 1937.
NUMBER OF GRAVESTONES: 2 dated 1925 and 1935. Numerous empty grave areas.
DOCUMENTATION:
- 1991 photographs and copies of gravestone inscriptions by Gelderblom.
- 1997 Colour slide of both remaining gravestones by Hansjürgen Heinritz.
PUBLICATIONS:
- Jörg Mitzkat und Andrew Schäfer: Jüdische Friedhöfe im Landkreis Holzminden,pages 16-17. Pub. by Heimat- und Geschichtsverein Holzminden. Holzminden (1996), 64pages (LBI).
- History and photographs by Bernard Gelderblom.
NOTES:
- The cemetery was first restored after 1945 including the recovery of the 2 gravestones. It had reportedly been demolished in 1938 and was subsequently used as a scrapyard by a nearby river Weser shipyard. What had been the former cemetery was leased in June 1943 to the shipyard for 12 years by the city of Bodenwerder. In 1954 the shipyard returned the area occupied by them. The cemetery was radically remodelled in 2002. Source: Bernard Gelderblom.
- The cemetery was destroyed after 1937 and once more desecrated in 1998, after having been refurbished in 1985/87.
- There is a small cemetery (about 300 sq.yds) in KEMNADE located on Unter der Piese which was completely destroyed under the Nazi regime. There are no gravestones nor is it possible to establish the number of graves that had existed. After WW2 permission was granted to a private individual to build a house on the site but construction came to a halt at the skeleton stage in 1952, when ownership of the site first changed. Since 1959 the ground is owned by the Association of Jewish Communities in Lower Saxony and all that remains on the site is a ruin.
- A memorial stone was erected on the site in the 1960s by the Association. Following a refurbishment in 1983, care and maintenance is in the hands of a local market garden since 1999.
SOURCES: University of Heidelberg and Historisches Handbuch, pages 228-233 (DNB)
(Researched and translated from German April 2009)