Designed by Ernest George and Alfred B. Yeates, Golders Green Crematorium is located in the London borough of Barnet in the neighbourhood Golders Green and was opened in 1902. Numerous emigrants were cremated in Golders Green Crematorium after their death, including the actors Elisabeth Bergner and Conrad Veidt, the gallerist Alfred Flechtheim, the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, the architect Ernö Goldfinger and the art historian Rosa Schapire. The emigrants’ ashes were scattered in the Garden of Rest/Memorial Garden with a corresponding memorial plaque (e.g. Elisabeth Bergner, see Steinthaler 2008, 62), buried under a rose bush or kept in an urn. Sigmund Freud and his wife’s Martha Freud’s ashes rest in a Greek vase from the collection of antiquities Freud brought with him to London from Vienna. It stands on a marble column designed by Ernst Freud, surrounded by urns of other family members in the so-called Freud Corner in the Ernest George Columbarium. Alfred Flechtheim’s ashes were interred in a niche in the Jewish Cemetery (4062A) opposite the crematorium. Rosa Schapire’s burial was described by Marie Neurath in a letter dated 9 February 1954. She writes:
“Yesterday, Monday, 8 February 10.45 in the morning a small group of friends – there were probably 30 people – gathered in a chapel of the crematorium in Golders Green to pay their last respects to Rosa. It was beautiful – the organ played the beautiful Bach melody for the G string and we were all quietly lost in thoughts of love and farewell, and then Professor Pevsner said a few words that expressed what all who were there had felt: Admiration for her courage, her youthfulness, her openness to everything new in which she participated until her last breath. He read passages from her last letter [...]. Finally, a Bach melody was played (Komm süßer Tod) and the flower-decorated coffin moved slowly to the back.” (Neurath 1954, Translation from German)
The description of the ceremony shows that Golders Green was an important place for the London emigrant community, where they and local actors met to say goodbye.