Israelitischer Friedhof Mistelbach

The Israelite cemetery in Mistelbach stands on a quiet plot off the Waldstraße, once outside the town but now within its limits. It was opened in 1900 to serve the small Jewish community of Mistelbach and its surroundings. Before then, Jewish burials took place in a corner of the Christian cemetery on the Kirchenberg. In 1898 the community bought land on the Waldstraße for a separate burial ground. The first recorded grave is that of Hermann Bauer, a local merchant buried in 1900. The cemetery holds 124 gravestones for 140 people, mostly single burials with a few pairs of spouses. Two rows are reserved for children who died young. The last dated stone is from May 1938, marking the grave of Philip Länger, a Jewish farmer from Poysdorf, his Christian wife and their three children. After the Anschluss the site was taken over by the town and later returned to the Vienna Kultusgemeinde in 1951. The stones show the names and dates of those laid to rest here. Visitors enter through a modest gate and walk along gravel paths between low grass and weathered monuments. The stones stand in neat rows, some leaning, others upright, each bearing Hebrew inscriptions and dates in German script. The air is still, broken only by the rustle of leaves. The place records a vanished community and the abrupt end of Jewish life in Mistelbach.