Alemannia Judaica

The cemetery is located in the south of the city, above the Schustergasse, accessible via a forest path branching off from the street Vogelberg 
. The Jewish community of the town was able to establish a cemetery as late as the 17th century (around 1660), for which they had to pay (1728) an annual tax of 12 groschen. The cemetery area covers 18.00 ar. and is terraced. The wealthier Jews of the town were obviously buried on the lower four terraces. There are about 220 graves. The southern part of the cemetery adjoining the Bleichenröder forest merges into forest.

At first there was probably a prayer hall. In 1852 an "old synagogue" and a school are mentioned. They were located in the immediate vicinity of the old Jewish residential area (at the Zehnthof). In 1854 a new synagogue with a schoolhouse next to it was built and solemnly consecrated in the same year. The Jewish community had to raise about 7,000 guilders for the representative building. Around 1860, 45 children were taught in the Jewish school. In the synagogue there was a Torah shrine with six Torah scrolls. During the November pogrom in 1938 the synagogue remained undestroyed.

The cemetery is located east of the old country road in the direction of Behrungen in the immediate vicinity of the border with Bavaria (1949 to 1990 located on the border fence of the former GDR). The dead of Berkach's Jewish community were buried in Kleinbardorf from the time of the first settlement of Jewish persons in the village around 1700 until after 1820. After 1820, the Berkach community was able to buy a plot of land above the "Rothrasen" and establish its own cemetery there.

In the 18th century a prayer hall was established in the area of the so-called "Judenbau". The synagogue is registered under No. 12 in the ... historical plan of Bauerbach.

In the 18th century a first synagogue was built, about which nothing else is known. It had become too small around 1840, so a new one was built in 1844/45, which was consecrated on September 19, 1845. In 1879 a part of the building was destroyed by fire. However, it was not necessary to renew the whole building and the synagogue was consecrated again on August 20, 1880. In the meantime, people prayed in a rented room. In 1904 and 1907 the synagogue was modernized, in the latter year electric lighting was introduced. In 1922 the community renewed the synagogue roof.

In the Middle Ages there was a synagogue on the property Judengasse 4 (probably today's Jüdengasse). It is not preserved.

In the spring of 1940, the last Jewish inhabitants had to move into some "Jewish houses" together. One of them was the residential house of the Jewish  banker Siegmund Hirschmann in Karolinenstraße 2. Many were later deported from there. In the summer of 1944, there was no longer a Jewish community in the town.

The residence of the Jewish Fleischmann family at Bernhardstraße 34 was converted into a so-called "Judenhaus". In 1941, the Sichel, Lichtenstein and Friedmann families had to move into the "Judenhaus" s house. From May 1942 the deportations of the Jewish inhabitants still living in the city took place.  

The Rosenberg couple (Siegmund and Adele, née Skolny) lived here in 1942. In 1943, the couple Freilich (Bernhard and Sophie, née Felsen) lived here. Between 1942 and 1944, the Jewish residents who remained until then were deported: on May 10, 1942, 17 people to the Bezlyce (Poland) ghetto, 41 more people the same year (all 58 were murdered), in 1943 and 1944, eleven people to the Auschwitz concentration camp and five to the Theresienstadt ghetto. According to the Altenburg historian Christian Repkewitz, the house was not a state-imposed  "Judenhaus".