Bollendorf had a thriving Jewish community with its own synagogue until the Nazi era. The latter was destroyed in the course of the November pogroms in 1938. The Jewish cemetery, which lies between the center of Bollendorf and the district of Weilerbach on a slope between terraced orchards, was desecrated and the gravestones knocked over.

It was not until the 1950s that the remains of the synagogue in the village were demolished and the burial ground of the Jewish cemetery was completely destroyed and subsequently leveled. A fragment of a pillar, which is said to have come from the entrance to the synagogue, was erected on a meadow sown at the time, with a memorial plaque to the Jewish community attached to it, and a new enclosing wall was built, in which at least 30 gravestones were probably installed.

The cemetery is a unique contemporary document for Rhineland-Palatinate of how the National Socialist past was dealt with in the early Federal Republic. In many places in Germany, including the Eifel, places and buildings that were still reminders of the Jewish fellow citizens persecuted by the National Socialists were completely rebuilt or changed so much that there was no longer any indication of their Jewish history. Judaism, which had been part of German society until the beginning of the Second World War, was virtually erased from the memory of many local communities in the first years after the war. The National Socialist crimes were only dealt with to a limited extent. In Bollendorf, unlike in many other places in Germany, this way of dealing with the past is still visible today, as the gravestone fragments built into the outer wall of the Jewish cemetery still bear witness to this.

This project by the local community of Bollendorf to redesign the cemetery, which was completed in 2023 and approved by the Jewish Community of Trier, has been preceded by several archaeological investigations by the Trier State Museum since 2019 at the instigation of the Bollendorf Jewish History Working Group and with the support of Dieter Burgard, the then State Commissioner for Jewish Life and Anti-Semitism.

As part of the redesign, which was financed with funds from the "Rhineland-Palatinate Foundation for Culture" and the LEADER program, inscribed gravestones were removed from the outer wall and replaced with placeholders with an integrated Star of David. The gravestones that were removed were fixed to the rear cemetery wall. In addition, a path was laid out across the grounds and the burial ground was reseeded with a meadow of scattered flowers. The aim of the redesign was to create a dignified resting place and memorial and to take into account the historical significance of this site.

There is a parking lot for hikers above the cemetery area. The memorial is thus directly integrated into the network of hiking trails in the Southern Eifel Nature Park.