Moment Magazine runs a lengthy interview with Britta Wauer, the director of In Heaven, Underground — a documentary film exploring the 131-year history of Berlin’s Weissensee Jewish cemetery that has been garnering enthusiastic reviews.
Most Berliners have heard of Weissensee, but never went there, though there were always people who were interested and went there. There’s a German term for this kind of Jewish cemetery—they call it an orphan cemetery, because all the relatives [of those buried there] were murdered or had to leave Germany. There’s no one really to take care of it. In the 1950s, the German government decided that they were responsible for Jewish cemeteries because they killed the people in charge, or forced them to flee. There are also private citizens who want to help, who go to the registry and say, ‘I really want to do something. What can I do?’ The people at the registry might say, ‘These are graves of families who committed suicide, so there’s really no one who can take care of the graves. If you want to, you’re welcome to.’ They choose one or two graves and say, ‘I’m the one who goes there now because there’s no one left to do this job.’ So for every birthday or date of death there’s someone coming, sometimes with flowers, or to put stones on it. They feel responsible for it. We, the Germans, are responsible. But there are also governmental intitiatives to take care of the mausoleums, because they say, ‘That’s something that belongs to our culture, and we have to preserve it.’
Read the full article HERE
Watch the trailer for the film!
1 comment on “Germany — Berlin’s Jewish Cemeteries”
I would be really interested in discovering if the Weissensee Cemetery has posted the names of the souls buried there. I have several extended family members that I would be anxious to see their tombstones.