The Jewish cemeteries in the euregio rhein-maas-nord

The pictorial-textual inventory, documentation and comparative research of Jewish cemeteries in the Dutch and German reference framework was funded by the euregio rhein-maas-nord, the provincial government in Limburg and the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the establishment of a euregional network for the purpose of researching regional history.

In the years 2007 to 2008, all Jewish cemeteries in the euregio rhein-maas-nord (not previously published elsewhere) were recorded and documented. The documentation of the individual cemeteries was successively edited online during this period.

All Hebrew, German and Dutch inscriptions were recorded, the Hebrew inscriptions translated and annotated. As far as possible with the help of secondary literature and online resources, biographical information on the respective persons was added. This applies primarily to references to family members murdered in the Shoah, which could be found in the database of the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad VaShem ("The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names") and in the "Memorial Book for the Victims of the Persecution of the Jews under National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933-1945". In addition, reference was made to family members buried in the same cemetery or in one of the other cemeteries processed. However, all this information makes no claim to completeness and can be added to in the future. Each individual documentation is rounded off by a short description of the individual gravestone, its design and symbolism as well as its present condition, supplemented by one or more illustrations.

At the end of the project, a detailed introduction is devoted to the similarities and special features of these Jewish cemeteries in the Dutch-German border region, which make clear the close, above all family ties between the Jewish communities on either side of the border, and address the local and regional differences in style and content of the inscriptions between Dutch and German communities on the one hand, and between an individual community and its respective neighbouring community on the other.