ALFELD (Leine) incorporating WETTENSEN: 31061 Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen) (Gerz, Peters).
DISTRICT: Hildesheim.
LOCATION OF CEMETERY IN WETTENSEN:
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Take right fork opposite Siebenbergstraße 2. Cemetery is about 700 yards along footpath, on the right side, close to the woods.
IN USE:
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Last burial in the Jewish cemetery about 1.5 miles north of Wettensen took place in 1880. Thereafter the local non-Jewish Alfeld cemetery was used for burials.
NUMBER OF GRAVESTONES: Unspecified.
DOCUMENTATION:
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1989/1990 photographs and translation of gravestone inscriptions in the Wettensen cemetery by Landesverband/Zentralarchiv.
NOTE:
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By 1910 the Jewish cemetery in Wettensen was in an extremely neglected state. By the end of the 1920s only 20 graves were recognisable as such and only 2 gravestones dating from the mid-18th century had remained in their original position.
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The first Jew being resident in Alfeld was recorded in 1358. Wettensen was incorporated into Alfeld in 1830. From the early 20th century there were no Jews left in Wettesen. The care of the cemetery has been in the hands of the city of Alfeld since 1986.
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Sometime after WW2, the graves in which Jews had been buried in the non-Jewish Alfeld cemetery were flattened for unknown reasons.
SOURCE: University of Heidelberg and Historishes Handbuch, pages 108-114 (DNB).
(Researched and translated from German January 2010).