The reference to stealing of coffin handles reminded me that there are many
places in Germany where there are no old church bells-- they melted them down
for armaments.

There also is a major overcrowding problem in German cemeteries-- if you
don't pay your annual maintenance fees, they'll dig you up and dump you--but
only in the Christian cemeteries.  The Jewish cemeteries are on the order of
half-full, with no graves after about 1940, and the individual Kraut
municipalities are obligated by law to "maintain" their Jewish cemeteries.

 In  the Jewish cemetery  in one of the little German towns my ancestors came
from (and were buried in), there were 3 or 4 graves for Russian POW farm
laborers who died there during the war.  Evidently the Russians weren't good
enough for the Christian/public cemetery, and there wasn't much demand for
space in the Jewish cemetery there in those days--everybody else had either
emigrated or been deported.

Ralph