Berlin continued to use the cemetery until 1955. Between 1955 and German reunification in 1990, only the small Jewish community in East Berlin used it. During the four decades of the German Democratic Republic, the cemetery was relatively neglected because most of Berlin's Jewish community had been murdered during, or had fled from, the Holocaust. Many of the graves were left unattended and became overgrown with weeds. In the 1970s, plans to build an expressway over part of the cemetery were considered, linking Michelangelostraße to the newly constructed Hansastraße. This proposal was dropped due to strong objections from the remaining Jewish community. It has been estimated by cemetery officials that the cost of fully repairing the damage caused by years of neglect would amount to 40 million euros. On the occasion of the cemetery's 125th anniversary, appeals were made to the Berlin government to increase funding, so that a bid can be made to add the site to the UNESCO world heritage list. The bid was supported by Berlin's former mayor Klaus Wowereit. The cemetery is open to visitors, and the index of grave sites is largely intact. Cemetery of the Orthodox congregation Adass Jisroel About two kilometres northwest of the Weißensee Cemetery, in Wittlicher Straße also in the Weißensee locality, the Orthodox congregation Adass Jisroel has operated its own cemetery since 1873. So far it contains about 3,000 graves, including those of: Siegmund Breitbart Esriel Hildesheimer Notable interments Hermann Aron, engineer Hans Aronson, physician Herbert Baum, anti-Fascist resistance fighter Micha Josef Berdyczewski, Hebrew scholar and journalist Oskar Cassel, politician Hermann Cohen, philosopher Julius Falkenstein, actor Samuel von Fischer, publisher, founder of the S. Fischer Verlag Richard Friedländer, businessman, adoptive father (and possibly biological father) of Magda Goebbels Josef Garbáty, cigarette manufacturer Nahum Gergel, Jewish activist, author and sociologist Eugen Goldstein, physicist Moritz Heimann, author and journalist Stefan Heym, author Max Hirsch, political economist and founder of the German trade unions Johannes Holzmann (pseudonym Senna Hoy), anarchist writer and activist Jacques Joseph, plastic surgeon Max Jaffe, biochemist Berthold Kempinski, Berlin wine merchant and founder of Kempinski Hotels Günter Kunert, writer Louis Lewandowski, composer Rudolf Mosse, newspaper publisher Benno Orenstein, industrialist Werner Scholem, member of the Reichstag Tom Seidmann-Freud, artist and writer Gustav Solomon Oppert, Indologist and Sanskritist Moritz Steinschneider, bibliographer and Orientalist Hermann Tietz, department store founder Wilhelm Traube, chemist Lesser Ury, painter Joseph Weizenbaum, computer scientist Theodor Wolff, author