The more the €1 million restoration of the “new” Jewish cemetery in St. Pölten, carried out with federal and provincial funding, has been completed, and on Friday (June 28) the cemetery will be handed over to the St. Pölten local authority, which will be responsible for its long-term upkeep.
The extensive restoration took place in 2022-2024, following an agreement between the Jewish Community Vienna and the City of St. Pölten on its longterm maintenance. According to Austria’s National Fund for the Victims of National Socialism, the Fund for the Restoration of the Jewish Cemeteries provided federal funding of around €880,000, and the Province of Lower Austria contributed around €280,000.
The restoration, it states
involved work by master builders, stonemasons, locksmiths and landscape architects, and included the renovation of the enclosure wall, the entrance gates and the graves, the static stabilisation of the grave markers, cleaning and safety measures, terrazzo add-ons in the ceremonial hall, as well as contracting planning work and general planning services.
The cemetery was founded in 1906. It is believed that around 340 people are buried there. Under the Nazis it was severely damaged, with many of the graves and matzevot destroyed. The city re-erected gravestones in 1951 and in 1954 the cemetery was restituted to the Vienna Jewish Community. Today, some 188 gravestones have been preserved. There is also a ceremonial hall, which was renovated in 2000 thanks to public funds and private donations.
Also, as the National Fund announcement notes, there is a “mass grave on the site containing the remains of at least 228 Hungarian-Jewish forced labourers who were shot by the SS in Hofamt Priel near Persenbeug during the night of 2 to 3 May 1945. In 2015, a gravestone inscribed with the names of the victims of that massacre was installed at the cemetery with the backing of the National Fund.”
The restored cemetery adds to the broader complex of recently restored Jewish heritage sites in St. Pölten. These include most prominently the magnificent domed former synagogue, which opened in April as a Jewish cultural center following a €4.6 million restoration and redevelopment financed in equal parts by the federal government, the province of Lower Austria, and the city of St. Pölten.
The synagogue complex has housed the Institute for Jewish History in Austria since 1988.
It now hosts a new permanent exhibit in the women’s gallery called The Synagogue and Its Community, which shows “the construction, devastation and two-time renovation of the synagogue building as well as the community life and fate of Jewish people who worked here.” It features objects, photos, and documents as well as interactive media stations.