In the region of Brandenburg, close to Berlin, there are many traces of Jewish life and even well settled communities, many of them destroyed during Shoah. The question regarding the choice of Jews to settle in those area has some simple answers: many of them where waiting for an eventual opportunity to make it to Berlin, or they just wanted to take advantage of the relatively tolerant - non-Catholic - ambiance and use the trade routes to Poland and other Central European destinations.
As his part of Germany used to be during the Cold War part of the communist world - the GDR - if a minimal, if any denazification, many of the traces of Jewish life disappeared. The idea of the German communists was that most of the perpetrators were actually in the 'West' therefore the biggest number of victims were on the other German soil. After the reunification, more efforts were directed towards recognizing the victims and traces of Jewish presence in this part of the country, hence the big number of mentions about Jewish life in Brandenburg and elsewhere in the ex-communist realm.
During a short weekend visit to Angermünde, on the Pushkinallee, I encounter a mention regarding the former Jewish cemetery in this locality, The Jews established here at the beginning of the 19th century, with 1709 the year of the first Jewish presence. In 1835 it was bought a piece of land that was used as a cemetery until 1936. After the intensification of anti-Semitic attacks, the cemetery was took over by the state and the space used for various destinations, among others as a garage. As in many cases in Brandenburg, Prenzlau for instance, the stones were took away by the locals and used for their own constructions.
There are no Jews or signs of Jewish presence in the nowadays Angermünde, only a short historical mention about their presence here, installed in 1996.
