Project number: [JOWBR, GERM-03491]

This list contains the basic genealogical information from grave inscriptions of the Jewish cemetery of Wallerstein in Bavaria and was compiled by Rolf Hofmann in the years 2003 - 2005, based on the transcription of the Hebrew inscriptions, carefully done by the Jewish teacher Hieronymus Stein and his son Sigmund Stein around 1890. Translation into German was provided by Rachel Dror, Dr Joachim Hahn, Mario Jacoby, Ruth Litai-Jacoby, David Birnbaum, and Gisela Blume.



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The WALLERSTEIN Jewish Cemetery in WALLERSTEIN, GERMANY

A result of Harburg Project research activities (HarburgProject@aol.com)

THE HISTORY OF THIS GRAVE LIST

This list contains the basic genealogical contents of nearly 1.000 grave inscriptions of the Jewish cemetery of Wallerstein in Bavaria and was compiled by Rolf Hofmann in the years 2003 – 2005, based on the transcription of the Hebrew inscriptions, carefully done by the Jewish teacher Hieronymus Stein and his son Sigmund Stein around 1890 (sponsored by the Wallerstein born banker Emil Wassermann of Bamberg), later completed by the teacher Gustav Erlebacher (around 1935), whose wife was buried here in 1936 (grave 990) and who in 1941 became a shoah victim. Translation into German was provided by Rachel Dror, Dr Joachim Hahn, Mario Jacoby, Ruth Litai-Jacoby, David Birnbaum, and Gisela Blume. Additional information was taken from still existing grave monuments (ca 330), tax lists, burial lists of the historic County of Oettingen, the "Jews matrikel" of the 19th century, various other personal files and 19 th century vital records of those Jewish communities then still using this cemetery as a central burial ground, until some of them started with their own cemeteries: Wallerstein, Oberdorf (until 1824), Oettingen (until 1850), Hainsfarth (until 1850), Pflaumloch (until 1839) and Kleinerdlingen (usually called "Erlangen" by Jews, never had its own cemetery). Besides that the Noerdlingen Jewish community was reestablished in 1870 (after 363 years of absence), and had its own cemetery since 1880. The Noerdlingen Jewish cemetery was also documented by Harburg Project with a grave list plus map in 2004.

SERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH VERIFICATION

Many of the following notations unfortunately contain errors as a basic and inevitable problem for several reasons. The stonemasons then were Christians, who were not familiar with Hebrew letters at all, so mistakes could easiliy have happened. Further more the teacher Stein might have had problems in deciphering old inscriptions, when he did his work around 1890, with most headstones decades old and many of them even more than one hundred years old. Besides that most common civil names were quite different from the traditional names of the deceased (which they were given when born), so often enough their names on their grave monuments were not the same as those by which they were known officially in every day life and in tax lists. Often enough a definite identification is very difficult or even impossible, because names and personal relations are not clear, and names of home villages are missing. The following list was very carefully composed, but still is not perfect in many ways and not always 100 % correct, as we probably may have contributed further errors due to the incredible amount of information we had to deal with. But it's a unique and valuable source not only for ancestors delving deeper into the far away history of their own family, but also for other genealogists and historians. Identification efforts probably will be a never ending task for future researchers.

SPELLING OF NAMES

As there is obviously only very little interest in this documentation by most German speaking historians or researchers, we decided to make this display for English speaking readers, especially for the descendants of Jewish families who once had lived in this area. So we named the months and holidays in English, but we generally left the names of the inscriptions in their original spelling, which was in Hebrew with some Jiddish aspects. In addition the names taken from vital records (and those in the name index) have a more German touch. One has to keep in mind that spelling varied then, because in these days spelling was mostly individual, often enough phonetical and not based on a general rule.

DEATH DATE IDENTIFICATION

The hebrew death dates given in the original grave list often enough did not match the death dates given in other (more reliable) records, so we had to speculate in finding the identity of many of the deceased. We tried to do this very carefully to avoid mistakes. In cases where we had doubts we put question marks. Date conversion from Hebrew dates to Gregorian dates was done with the help of hebcal date converter. Probably the identity of many of the deceased never will be uncovered, but it's a miracle anyway that with so many of them identification was possible. And above all, the fact that the original grave list survived the holocaust is the real miracle indeed.

Cemetery Map