Jüdischer Friedhof

Before a cemetery could be established, the Jews of Rülzheim buried their dead in the large Jewish cemeteries in Essingen and Ingenheim. This was a very laborious process due to the transportation and communication conditions at that time. With the order from the Palatinate government on September 10, 1821, to establish their own cemetery in Rülzheim within two years, the actual history of the Rülzheim burial site begins.

This cemetery district Rülzheim was to include the Jews from Germersheim, Bellheim, Kuhardt, Leimersheim, and Hagenbach. In 1826, land was purchased from Andreas Amberger for 20 guilders, and a fenced burial site was created there, covering a very large area of 4,880 square meters.

In a record dated September 20, 1851, it states that the path to the cemetery should be made passable with unsieved Rhine gravel. The gravedigger is tasked with establishing the graves as well as the monuments in straight and orderly lines and keeping the cemetery clean.

In 1903, the cemetery commission decided to create a registry of the graves.

In 1938, during the Reich pogrom night on November 10, the cemetery became a place of destruction and devastation. One-third of all graves were destroyed, gravestones were carried away, thrown into the nearby Altbach and onto the surrounding fields, and used for road construction.

After the war, the municipality of Rülzheim began to remove the greatest damages by returning recovered gravestones back to the cemetery. A comprehensive renovation and re-registration only took place in the 1970s.

In 1986, with the approval of the local community, the monument protection procedure for cemeteries was initiated.

*) For complete details, see the local chronicle "Rülzheim through the Ages" 1991

Further information can be found on the internet at:

www.alemannia.de/judaica.de/ruelzheimfriedhof.htm

Opening times

The Jewish cemetery can be visited year-round; the key for the entrance gate can be obtained from the Rülzheim association municipality.