History of the Cemetery

From its foundation in 1680 until the 1820s, the Jewish community of Lüneburg was unable to bury its dead within the city. The city authorities refused permission for the establishment of a Jewish cemetery. Members of the community therefore had to use Jewish cemeteries in other towns, most often in Harburg, almost 50 kilometres northwest of Lüneburg.

Only in 1823 did the City Council of Lüneburg grant the Jewish community the right to establish its own cemetery – far outside the city gates, near the former Tatterschanze (today “Am Neuen Felde”). As far as is currently known, the first burial took place in early 1828: the community’s teacher, Selig Leser, was laid to rest in the new cemetery.

In the following decades, the cemetery expanded together with the Jewish community itself. By 1870 there were almost forty graves, and by 1890 nearly eighty. In 1895 the community therefore enlarged the cemetery for the first time. In 1912 Moritz and Betty Jacobsohn donated a Tahara house (funeral hall) in memory of their son Albert, who had died shortly before. The building was designed by the well-known Lüneburg architect Franz Krüger.

In 1922, when the cemetery already contained almost 140 graves, a second extension was carried out. However, growing antisemitism and economic crises caused the community to shrink in the following years, so that this additional area was never used for burials.

During the November Pogroms of 1938, parts of the Jewish cemetery were desecrated and destroyed for the first time by Nazi activists. In 1939 Betty Dublon, a widow, was buried here – the final burial in the cemetery. The cemetery grounds themselves remained intact, and most of the gravestones were still standing.

From 1942 onward, parallel to the deportation of the last Jews of Lüneburg, the city sought to take over the cemetery grounds. Housing developments had initially been planned for the extension area that contained no graves. Growing housing shortages ultimately led to the rapid construction of temporary housing for bombed-out residents and displaced “ethnic Germans.” During the winter of 1943/44, the municipal garden inspector Rößner ordered the entire cemetery to be radically “cleared” and levelled for this purpose. Almost all gravestones were removed and were presumably sold for reuse elsewhere. The mourning hall was used as a workshop and storage facility. The last remaining gravestones of the Jewish cemetery were incorporated into the foundations of the semi-detached temporary housing erected in 1944. Families of employees of the municipal parks department moved into the building. They used half of the former burial ground for vegetable cultivation, while the other half served the parks department as a tree nursery. This situation continued after the end of the war.

The members of the new Jewish community of Lüneburg, founded in the summer of 1945 by survivors of the Shoah, initially knew nothing about the cemetery. When they became aware of the destroyed site in July 1947, the city had the former burial areas reconverted into lawns and the mourning hall cleared. The temporary housing remained, but was separated from the rest of the cemetery grounds. Ownership of the property passed in 1952 to the JTC (Jewish Trust Corporation), and in 1960 to the Association of Jewish Communities of Lower Saxony.

Until the 1990s, the Association repeatedly attempted, without success, to persuade the city administration to provide greater support for the maintenance of the cemetery. Unlike other cities, Lüneburg long refused to accept responsibility for caring for the cemetery that had once been destroyed on its orders and for transforming it into a dignified place of remembrance. Only after relatives of former Lüneburg Jewish families intervened from abroad was a memorial stone erected in 1965, in agreement with the Association of Jewish Communities, as an initial step.

When the temporary housing was demolished in 1967, the gravestones that had been used in its foundations were recovered. However, the individual fragments remained for several years on the grounds and inside the mourning hall. Some gravestone fragments that relatives were still able to identify during the 1960s can unfortunately no longer be located today.

In 1972, thirteen gravestones were re-erected, some of them only as fragments. Since the locations of the original graves could no longer be determined, they were placed in a row at the edge of the former burial ground. Again and again the site became overgrown, while fences and gates deteriorated. Despite repeated requests from the Association, the city assisted with maintenance only in isolated cases.

In 1989 a memorial plaque was installed on the mourning hall. Nevertheless, for decades the cemetery remained an almost forgotten place, unknown even to many residents of the city.

In 2022 the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Lüneburg initiated a project to restore the mourning hall, which had been neglected for decades. It is the last surviving Jewish community building in the city. In 2024 the carefully restored building was handed over to the Association of Jewish Communities of Lower Saxony. Since then, the mourning hall has served as a place of learning, encounter, and remembrance. 

Following the restoration of the mourning hall, the entire cemetery grounds were redesigned. At the centre of the former burial area now stand six stelae bearing the names and life dates of those buried here. Their graves were destroyed, but their names have been preserved in this way.

The surviving fragments of the historic gravestones were reassembled wherever possible, allowing the few remaining stones to be erected once again in their original form. Since the locations of the associated graves could no longer be identified, these gravestones have been arranged in an oval as testimonies to the site’s tragic history. Visitors must pass through this oval in order to reach the stelae preserving the names of the dead.

At the same time, since 2026 this historic site can once again be used as a Jewish cemetery, as the northwestern section of the grounds lies outside the former burial area. It is reserved for future burials.