Cemetery

Immediately after moving to Wankheim in 1776, four to five Jewish families leased a site outside the village. The site was and is located on the boundary of the district near today's B28 in the area "Schinderklinge". The name indicates that slaughterhouse waste had previously been disposed of there.

The annual rent was three gulden plus for each adult burial two gulden and each child under 14 years one gulden. Only after protracted negotiations could the site be acquired by the Jewish community on March 7,1845, in return for a payment of 200 gulden.

Enclosed cemetery with gravestone inventory. 155 recorded graves/stones.

According to an old document from 1766, the cemetery should have been established already "one hundred years ago", i.e. around 1666. This would probably correspond approximately to the first immigration of Jews in the village. The oldest preserved gravestone, however, dates from 1761. Since late summer 1920 there has been a memorial stone in the center of the cemetery for the two fallen soldiers of the First World War of the Oerlinghausen synagogue community: Albert Kulemeyer (1918) and Ernst Joachim Meyer (1914). The last burial took place in 1937.

Just by the entrance gate today there are several memorial plaques. The inscription on the central memorial plaque reads: "From the depths I call you Eternal! (also in Hebrew above); Dedicated to our murdered brothers and sisters". On both sides next to it are listed the names of Jewish community members of Brandenburg, mostly with dates of birth, who perished as a result of the Holocaust. The names of people buried in the original cemetery and their dates of death are also inscribed on plaques on the brick wall.

Area enclosed by wall with a large number of gravestones; partly restored by stonemasonry or inscriptions made recognizable again!

As early as 1776, the Jews settled in Wittstock applied for their own burial place. Thereupon in the direction of Kyritz the "old God's Acre" was established, where from 1806 to 1862 altogether 36 grave places were established. However, this was only the front part of today's area.