A courageous new beginning (1945-1990)

After World War II, a handful of survivors of the Shoah returned to the Münsterland region and the city of Münster. Siegfried and Else Goldenberg made space in their apartment available as a prayer room and also worked to ensure that the cemetery was repaired. A bomb had produced a crater and destroyed many gravestones. The roof of the mourning hall had collapsed in the spring of 1947; building materials were hard to come by. On February 3, 1948, the Goldenbergs wrote to the City of Münster's Department of Public Works on behalf of the Jewish community to inform it that:

“between December 24, 1947 and January 30, 1948 the mourning hall at the Jewish cemetery was broken into. The windows of the memorial hall were smashed. All the wood stored there, which was going to be used for foundations, was stolen. 2 large oak candlesticks and other religious furnishings were also stolen. In addition, the small side door was broken open and the hall was soiled. In the cemetery itself, some fir trees were cut down and a number were uprooted, no doubt to be used as Christmas trees. Though the burgling and desecration of our cemetery were presumably committed for the purpose of gathering firewood, the theft of these objects from a religious site is a sign of unbelievable depravity. …” (Stadtarchiv, Amt 65, no. 225)

The Department of Public Works responded on February 7, 1948 with a letter to the head of the police department:

“Due to the sharp decline in the size of the Jewish community in Münster in the recent past, the Jewish cemetery on Roxelerstrasse no longer enjoys the necessary degree of care and supervision. As a result, the plantings and the ceremonial [sic] room were recently damaged by unknown perpetrators. We therefore ask for this circumstance to be taken into account and call for close supervision to prevent further misdeeds.” (Stadtarchiv, Amt 65, no. 225)

This correspondence show the hardship people were experiencing at the time, but also documents the ruthlessness with which the Jewish community’s burial ground was pillaged; moreover, it shows the authorities’ inability to express the Shoah in appropriate words – and, at least, their willingness to protect the Jewish cemetery from further attacks.

Thus in October 1962 the Jewish community bought another strip of land almost 3 meters broad. This was located to the north behind the mourning hall; it was part of the Blücherkaserne barracks plot and previously belonged to the Münster Oberfinanzdirektion (finance directorate). The seller demanded that the boundary be secured by a wall surmounted by fencing and barbed wire. In 1969, all the walls surrounding the cemetery were repaired.

In the decades between 1950 and 1990, the community had to bid farewell to some of its post-Shoah founders. The gravestone commemorating Siegfried (L155) and Else Goldenberg (L155) recalls that both survived their deportation to Riga and other forced labor camps, but also that their young daughter Miriam was murdered in Riga. Siegfried Goldenberg was the elected head of the Jewish community right up to 1975, supported at all times by his wife Else. In 1975, they received the Paulus-Plakette – an award from the City of Münster in recognition of their services.

The married couple Bernhard (L192) and Eva Brilling (L195) retained the tradition of separate graves. They came to Münster in 1957. Having found a job here at the Institutum Iudaicum, Bernhard Brilling continued his research into the history of the Jews in Westphalia and Münsterland. In a moving epitaph, Eva Brilling states that she – like the first woman in paradise – “was his helper who stood by him”.