Graves reservation
We digitalize and publish the pre-Shoah graves reservations of Jewish Community of Hamburg and reconnect the information about the people who perished in Shoah with the living descendants.
The Jewish Community's archive room contains grave cards from the Ohlsdorf, Bornkampsweg, and Langenfelde Jewish cemeteries.
The cards were written and placed before the Holocaust. They contain alphabetically ordered index cards of individuals who reserved and even paid for grave plots in these cemeteries. Some reserved a grave next to their spouse, and others purchased a grave plot for themselves, as is common practice among many Jews.
As a first step, we have decided to document all the cards and publish them in a clear table.
Our goal is to make this material and this history accessible and to work with you to fill in the gaps. If you know what happened to someone on the list, or if you are one of the relatives who would like a photo of the card or can provide us with further information, we would be grateful to hear from you.
Reservation
By Rabbi Bistritzky
Guest Author
I always knew about our family connection to Hamburg - I knew that my grandfather Yehuda Leib (Loeb) Bistritzky was born in Hamburg in 1926. Not much more than that. He never shared much else. For him, Germany was taboo. He never bought any product made in Germany. It wasn’t until 2004, a year after my wife Chani and I arrived on our mission to Hamburg, that he agreed to visit again. Only then did he open up and share, but unfortunately, not enough.
I didn’t know that here in Hamburg lived my aunt on my grandmother’s side, Leib’s wife, Ita née Travis, who was also born in Germany. She was born in Frankfurt in 1929. I found out that my great-aunt, Isabel Steindecker, is buried in the old Jewish cemetery in Langenfelde. (...)
