by Karin Sczech, Erfurt

In principle, according to the Jewish faith, burials take place for eternity and graves are only to be reopened if a reburial of the dead to Israel is planned. The integrity of the buried is also very important. Accordingly, archaeological investigations of Jewish cemeteries are rarely carried out.

In Erfurt, a rescue excavation was necessary in 2013 at the medieval Jewish cemetery, as construction machinery had already disturbed the ground. In close consultation with the Jewish Community of Thuringia, anthropological investigations were also arranged after the excavations were completed. Due to various circumstances, these investigations were delayed longer than expected, so that the skeletons were still in storage at the Thuringian State Office of Archaeology in Weimar when, in 2017, the Israeli geneticist Shai Carmi made a request to also conduct genetic investigations. There are very few Jewish cemeteries worldwide where this was possible.

After the expulsion of the Jews from Erfurt in 1453, the city first built a barn on the cemetery grounds and then a very large granary between 1464 and 1472.  In the process, no consideration was given to the burials and all the graves were destroyed. The access ramp necessary for the conversion of the granary into a car park was built outside the building in 2013 on a previously undisturbed area of the cemetery. Only the 47 graves that would have been destroyed by the ramp were excavated. Other burials remained under the ramp.

It is highly probable that this area of the cemetery was established at the time of the second Jewish community after 1453. All the dead lay in coffins, and some of them were found to have dress accessories. One of the dead was killed by sword strokes, in the case of all the others the cause of death cannot be determined, but anthropological examinations show that the dead were relatively well nourished and did not work hard physically. Nevertheless, numerous clinical pictures could be read, in large numbers for example on the teeth.

The genetic investigations prove several families whose members were buried directly next to each other. The origin of the families can be determined mainly from two regions: Besides Central Europe, a group from the East (Poland, Czech Republic) can also be determined. There lie the places from which, according to the tax lists, several members of the second community came to Erfurt. Even more interesting is the possibility to determine the origin of the individuals through isotope analyses. The food intake can be used to determine where an individual grew up. In the case of the two families, it was possible to prove that the parents came from the east and the children grew up in Erfurt.

For the geneticists, the greatest role in the investigations is naturally played by the great correlation of genetic developments, for example the development of genetic defects that can still be found today in the modern Ashkenazi population. From the point of view of historians dealing with the history of the Jews in Erfurt, the results on, the questions about the emergence of the second Jewish community and ultimately the history of the individuals are of utmost importance. Last year, the remains were reburied in the 19th century Jewish cemetery on Nossenweg.

The research team hopes that the Erfurt project will provide impulses that will enable further comparable investigations to be carried out throughout Europe, which may ultimately contribute to research into the migratory movements of Jews from late antiquity to the early modern period.

The results of the research project were published in the journal Cell. Shai Carmi, Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century, Cell (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.002 An article on the subject also appears in Science. The New York Times published an extensive article.

Archaeology: Karin Sczech, City of Erfurt (previously Thuringian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and Archaeology); karin.sczech@erfurt.de

History: Maike Lämmerhirt, University of Erfurt, maike.laemmerhirt@gmx.de

Anthropology: Stefan Flohr, University of Hildesheim (previously Thuringian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and Archaeology); flohrs@uni-hildesheim.de

Genetics: Shai Carmi, Faculty of Medicine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; shai.carmi@mail.huji.ac.il; Shamam Waldmann, shamamlevi@gmail.com David Emil Reich, Harvard Medical School, Evolutionary Biology, Genetics; reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu;

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