(JHE) — A 3-year, €600,000 project to renovate and secure the Jewish cemetery in Klosterneuburg has been completed. Established in around 1873, the cemetery has 652 graves and extends over 4,000 square meters.
Work took place in three phases, with the federally-financed Fund for the Restoration of the Jewish Cemeteries in Austria providing three quarters of the total funding and the province of Lower Austria providing one quarter, the Fund said in a press release.
Together with the Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments, a restoration concept was drawn up to prevent the cemetery from falling further into a state of disrepair. Following the approval of the work, the cemetery will be handed over to the local community of Klosterneuburg for upkeep in spring 2021. The willingness of the municipality to ensure a cemetery’s future upkeep for a period of 20 years is a prerequisite for the provision of restoration funding by the Cemeteries Fund.
The Cemeteries Fund was established in 2010 to preserve more than 60 Jewish cemeteries throughout Austria. It is allocated an annual sum of €1 million by the federal government over a period of twenty years.
So far, the Fund said, about €7.3 million euros of federal funds have been paid out for the restoration of 13 Jewish cemeteries in Austria.
It said Klosterneuburg is the sixth Jewish cemetery in Austria that has now been fully renovated.
Read the full press release about the restoration on the Cemeteries Fund web site