Activities

Jüdischer Friedhof Frankfurt (Oder)

"The cemetery of the Holy Jewish Community of Frankfurt a. O." in the former Dammvorstadt of Frankfurt, nowadays Słubice, is located at the fork of the roads to Rzepin (formerly Reppen) and Krosno Odrzańskie (formerly Crossen an der Oder). The cemetery was first mentioned in a document in 1399, but had already been established at least one hundred years earlier. Thus it belongs to
the oldest Jewish burial sites in Central Europe. The year 1975 saw its 
devastation.
Today only a few rebuilt stones and remains of the neo-Romanesque mourning hall, the cemetery wall and the house of the cemetery gardeners remain visible. In memory of the three most important rabbis of the Jewish community of Frankfurt (Oder), Sacharaa Mendel von Podheitz, Joseph ben Meir Theo mim and Jehuda Löb Margaliot, three new stones were erected in 2004. The tomb of the world-famous Rabbi Theo mim, also known as Pri Megadim, has been the destination of annual pilgrimages of Orthodox Jews ever since. In the tragic pogrom night of 1938 the Frankfurt synagogue's interior had been burned out, while only a number of prayer books and other utensils had been salvaged. In the wake of these events the non-Jewish cemetery gardener Otto Billerbeck took it upon him to bury them symbolically according to Jewish custom in this cemetery.
The last official Jewish funeral took place in 1944. Since 2007, the administration of the Jewish cemetery of Słubice has been in the hands of the Warsaw Foundation for the Protection of Jewish Heritage.