Jewish Cemetery in Ybbs an der Donau

The Jewish cemetery in Ybbs stands in the Göttsbach district of Ybbs an der Donau in Lower Austria. It covers 2 791 square metres and once served the local Jewish community and mourners from the southern and western Waldviertel. The site includes a walled enclosure and a small hall for funeral rites, both protected by the state. The cemetery was founded in 1894 by the newly formed Israelite Cultural Community of Ybbs, created after the Israelite Law of 1890. In 1944, during the Second World War, an SA officer ordered about 300 gravestones removed and sold to a stone-cutting firm in Amstetten. After lengthy legal disputes, roughly one hundred stones were recovered in 1961 and re-erected in two central rows, though their original positions are no longer known. Today the cemetery is part of a school project run by the Francisco-Josephinum college in Wieselburg, together with the Vienna Israelite Cultural Community and the towns of Ybbs and Břeclav in the Czech Republic. Pupils help restore the site, reconstruct lost registers and prepare a memorial plaque. Visitors find a quiet rectangular plot with rows of upright gravestones and the modest funeral hall at one end.