Ohave Sholom Cemetery (O07)
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7410 Olive Street University City, Missouri 63130 314-721-0026 Jewish Cemetery Established: 1949 Size: 0.18 acre Burials indexed: 226 (1906*–2003) |
Photo taken by Ilene Murray © 2010; used with permission.
GPS Coordinates: Latitude:38.6706800, Longitude: -90.3301100 Click here for a Google map to the cemetery.
This cemetery is the smallest active cemetery in Missouri. The 88 by 91 foot burial ground, surrounded by a tall hedge of holly trees on three sides, is located on a section of the former Wesleyan Cemetery at Hanley and Olive in University City.
In 1939, the Centenary Methodist Church sold two and three-quarter acres to Brith Sholom Congregation. The Jewish congregation never used the property as a cemetery but built a community center on the site. In 1949, a group of Jewish refugees from Germany purchased a small plot of land from Brith Sholom to establish an Orthodox Jewish cemetery. In 1951, the owners of the Wesleyan Cemetery closed their site and relocated the graves. The old cemetery sold the remainder of the property to the Able Development Company.
The Ohave Sholom congregation erected a large granite monument along the west wall in memory of the six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust. This monument serves as a memorial site for their members who wish to commemorate loved ones by visiting the graves of family and friends prior to the Jewish High Holidays.
The staff of Chevra Kadisha Cemetery, located nearby on North and South Road, provides maintenance for this cemetery. Each grave is covered with a blanket of neatly trimmed ivy. Although there are still a few unused burial plots, they are all claimed. No further burials will be made at this cemetery after these plots are used.
Source of Data for this Cemetery
Volunteers from the former Jewish Genealogical Society of St. Louis walked this cemetery to record data from grave markers. Some source records contain burial dates that precede the date when the cemetery was established. Since this is a memorial cemetery, some markers are actually cenotaphs. That is, they pay tribute to people who died in Europe during World War II, but those people are not actually buried here.
Cemetery Specific Data Notes
Hamilton, Esley, The Cemeteries of University City (The Historical Society of University City: University City, Missouri, 1998), pages 19-20.
Murray, C. Edwin, “Burials at Ohave Shalom (as of 1 January 2003),” Generations newsletter, Jewish Genealogical Society of St. Louis, February 2003.
The cemetery Location field combines the lot and row values from the original source as (Lot | Row).
Additional Resources
None.
For more information on B’rith Sholom, click here.
Last modified: 07-Dec-2019 11:32