CLOPPENBURG: 49661 Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen) (Gerz, Peters).

DISTRICT: Cloppenburg.

LOCATION OF CEMETERY: Ritterstrasse, adjoining the hospital.

IN USE:

• From around 1870 until 1957 (last burial). There is now no trace of an even earlier burial ground for Jews, on the edge of the river Soeste outside and to the west of Cloppenburg, close to the road towards Stedingsmühlen.

NUMBER OF GRAVESTONES: 32.

DOCUMENTATION:

• 1979 photographs and copies of all gravestone inscriptions with translations on Groningen, followed by Groningen 1977.

PUBLICATIONS:

• History, photographs and gravestone inscriptions by Töllner 1983, pages 649-670.

• Walter Denis: Aus der Geschichte der juedischen Gemeinde in Cloppenburg:ein Beitrag zur Stadtgeschichte, publ. 2003 Heimatbund fuer das Oldenburger Muensterland, Cloppenburg: Heimatbund Oldenburger Muensterland, 270 pages illust. tables (LBI).

NOTES:

• The cemetery was renovated in 1954 and it was transformed into a place of remembrance in 1983. A plaque recalls the torched synagogue. Since 1959 the cemetery is owned by the Association of Jewish Communities in Lower Saxony.

• A case of vandalism in 1991 is recorded on a commemorative plaque.

SOURCE: University of Heidelberg and Historisches Handbuch, pages 422-429 (DNB).

(Researched and translated from German June 2009)