Leopold’s ancestors are buried in a cemetery in Gangelt, Germany
Walter Leopold stands by the gates to the Shutesbury cemetery owned by the Jewish Community of Amherst. Leopold had the gates brought from a cemetery in a German town where his family lived. SHUTESBURY – Walter Leopold traveled back to Gangelt, Germany, in the spring to learn more about his family: four generations of Leopolds lived there before World War II.
He visited the cemetery where his ancestors lay buried. That was just days after the cemetery had been vandalized yet again.
One of the cemetery gates lay broken on the ground, the other hung by its hinges – a visible sign of all that was lost. All the Jews that once had lived in that vibrant Jewish community are gone.
Now the gates that Leopold has had restored now hang on the Jewish Community of Amherst cemetery here. They are being dedicated Sunday at 2 p.m.
Leopold was born was born in Tilburg, the Netherlands, in 1942, a few months before his parents went into hiding in what was then Nazi-occupied territory. The Leopold family spent two years in hiding.
Eventually, he and his parents and siblings came to the United States after the war and settled in New Jersey. Leopold came to Amherst in 1964 and ended up going to graduate school at the University of Massachusetts. With three children, he and his wife became members of the JCA.
Seeing the gates in disrepair in Gangelt, Leopold asked about bringing them here.
“Four generations of my family (were there). Most perished in Auschwitz,” he said.
He talked to the Jewish Community president and others about the possibility of hanging them at the cemetery, which simply had an open wooden fence. “They felt honored to be part of it. There are no Jews in Gangelt. We have a thriving Jewish community here.”
“Life goes on. There’s a continuity,” he said, seeing the gates at the cemetery now. He and his wife have plots here.
Leopold said that the people who helped in this project aren’t Jewish. Josef Gielen, a retired bank manager and volunteer member of the Jewish Cemetery Committee in Gangelt, had the gates shipped to the United States. In Germany, Jewish cemeteries are federally protected and preserved as monuments. The gates arrived July 17 and Leopold drove to Boston to pick them up.
Leopold had contacted Glen and Leon Demers, who own Demers & Sons Restorations in Belchertown, and had them read a history of the gates. His family then offered to do the work at cost.
“I like seeing stuff from the past preserved,” said Glen Demers said. He liked seeing the family’s history. “It was pretty neat stuff.”
JCA co-president Lisa Perlbinder said they “feel very blessed” to have the gates.
In Germany, the gates to the cemeteries were usually closed and locked. But Leopold said he likes to see them open.
“The cemetery has always been the foundation stone of a Jewish community – the place where we honor our ancestors and inevitably go to join them,” said Rabbi Benjamin Weiner in a statement. “We are so humbled by Mr. Leopold’s gift, which will strengthen the foundation of our Amherst community. These gates will help reconnect our community to its roots that sink back into the old country, and allow us to carry forward the legacy of our ancestors for future generations.”