Dresden - New Jewish Cemetery with Temporary Synagogue and Tahara

After the first Jüdische cemetery on the territory of the Kingdom of Saxony at the Pulsnitzer Stra;e in Dresden-Neustadt had become too small, acquired 1864 the Jüdische community to Dresden a plot of land for the creation of a new cemetery in the district Johannstadt.

The New Jüdische cemetery was opened on 02 June 1867 in Dresden-Johannstadt. Already a year earlier, the mourning hall (Tahara) was built according to plans of the architect Ernst Friedrich Giese. The geometrically designed cemetery is located adjacent to the Trinitatisf cemetery on Fiedlerstrasse. The Tahara forms the launch of the central axis of the cemetery site.

In the Allied bombing of Dresden in the night from 13 to 14 February 1945, the cemetery was hit hard.  The Tahara burned out completely.

On the foundation walls of the destroyed Tahara in 1949/1950 a new building was erected. Since already the Semper synagogue on the Hasenberg in the November pogrom night 1938 by members of the SA and other members of the NSDAP was plundered and burned down, the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Dresden decided to use the new building both as a synagogue, and as a mourning hall.

Since the Jewish religious rules did not allow the establishment of a synagogue in a cemetery, structural changes had to be made. The building was also separated from the actual cemetery by a hedge and served until the consecration of the New Synagogue on the Hasenberg as a temporary home of the community.

The Dresden painter and architect Edmund Schuchardt was in charge of the reconstruction. On the roof found until the new building of the New Synagogue on the Hasenberg a Star of David saved from the burned Semper Synagogue his place.