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Finding graves in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Leipzig

From 1864 to 1928 and again from 1938 to 1945, about 5,000 burials took place at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Leipzig. Although around 4,050 graves and wall plots in five sections have survived, many of them can’t be identified. For one thing, a lot of inscriptions are weathered and thus illegible. Moreover, several original headstones have disappeared and been replaced by anonymous placeholders, also known as grave markers. Additionally, owing to the lack of space, many graves contain two or even three bodies (indicated by the original grave numbers followed by lower case letters), making unambiguous identification almost impossible.

After the cemetery was opened in 1864, the Jewish Religious Community of Leipzig always kept records of the burials that took place, enabling the majority of the anonymous graves to be identified. A register of deaths exists for the years 1938 to 1945 (see ‘History in the Nazi era’), in which most of the victims of the Nazis buried in sections IIIa and Va were recorded by name. In addition, dozens of Hebrew inscriptions on gravestones have been translated thanks to the help of Rabbi Zsólt Balla and theologian Dr Timotheus Arndt, allowing those buried to be identified.

The old grave numbering system has been replaced by a new system for simplicity’s sake. The new numbering is based on the cemetery as it is today. Each grave is numbered by the row containing it and its position within the row. Even so, the original direction of counting has been retained. In sections I to III, graves are counted in the Hebrew way from right to left and from the end to the beginning, whereas in sections IV and V, they are counted in the Arabic way from left to right and from beginning to end. In the topographical maps, arrows indicate the direction of counting. The numbering of rows has been adopted from old documents, although this has led to some peculiarities. For example, between rows 11 and 12 in section I is row 11a. We recommend consulting the map of each section.

Wall family plots (also known as graves of honour or hereditary graves) always bear the name of the family that originally acquired them. The grave numbers have been taken from the old cemetery registers. To find out where they are, consult the general maps. Note that it’s often difficult to identify illegible gravestones within wall plots because the information in the historical records is frequently unclear. In many cases, visitors may have to make do with merely finding their ancestors’ wall plot rather than their individual graves.

• The grave search function distinguishes between information in the registers and that on the gravestones, as they often differ. Many names aren’t noted in the registers at all, while in other cases there is no trace in the cemetery of people listed in the registers. We recommend searching in both categories.
• Small letters after a grave number indicate the presence of multiple bodies in a double or family grave. The names of additional people who have been buried are listed under ‚Notes’.
• Photographs with red markings indicate a grave presumed to exist at the location in question but no longer visible. As there is no gravestone, such graves do not have their own number. Instead, they are indexed with the number of the previous grave followed by a lower case letter.