Berlin-Mitte, Jüdischer Friedhof Große Hamburger Straße

After the Jewish cemetery in Spandau, the Judenkiewer Spandau, first mentioned in a document in 1324, the Old Jewish Cemetery is the oldest burial ground for Jews in Berlin. In 1671, Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, allowed 50 Jewish families who had been expelled from Vienna to settle in the Mark Brandenburg. As a result, Mordechai Model bought the 0.6-hectare site, which was still outside the city gates at the time, and gave it to the newly formed Jewish community as a burial ground. in 1672, Gumpricht Jechiel Aschkenasi was the first person to be buried there. In 1827, the cemetery was closed for new burials due to the lack of space for expansion and the permanent resting place of the dead in the Jewish faith: Burials then took place at the new Jewish cemetery on Schönhauser Allee until 1880 and at the Berlin-Weißensee Jewish cemetery from 1880 onwards. The number of burials in the Old Jewish Cemetery varied between 3,000 and up to 12,000. The most famous grave in the cemetery was that of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786). The Jewish community's first retirement home was opened in the immediate vicinity on 27 July 1829. In 1942, the Gestapo set up a collection camp in the building, where up to 55,000 Jewish citizens of Berlin were gathered and transported to the Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps, where most of them were murdered. The cemetery was destroyed by the Gestapo in 1943. A protective trench was created in the cemetery, which was secured with gravestones. In the GDR, the cemetery was turned into a public park. in 1985, the sculpture "Jewish Victims of Fascism" by Will Lammert, who had created it in 1957 for the Ravensbrück memorial, was erected on the site of the destroyed old people's home. the cemetery was restored in 2007-2008 and is now recognizable as such again. In the final days of the Second World War, numerous war victims were buried in mass graves. 16 collective burial plots with 2,425 m² are recorded (Martin Bayer, 16.04.2020)