The city of Bochum is a large city in the centre of the Ruhr area.
The independent city in the administrative district of Arnsberg is, along with Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund and Hagen, one of the five major centres of the Ruhr area and belongs to the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.

With approximately 365,000 inhabitants, Bochum is the sixth largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, the second largest city in Westphalia and one of the 20 largest cities in Germany.
In Bochum there are nine universities or branches of universities. Bochum has been a university city since the founding of the Ruhr-Universität in the southern part of Querenburg in 1962, the first new university in the Federal Republic of Germany after the Second World War and one of the largest universities in Germany with over 40,000 students.

Gertrud von Nivelles (* 626; † 17. March 659), also Gertraud, Gertraudt, Gertrude and Geretrudis, was abbess of the Augustinian monastery of Nivelles in Belgium and is venerated in the Roman Catholic Church as Virgin and Saint,

Gertrud was the daughter of Pippin the Elder and his wife Iduberga and thus a relative of Charlemagne.

At the age of 14 she entered the abbey founded by her mother in Nivelles. In the middle of the 7th century, Gertrud von Nivelles founded the Benedictine abbey in Karlburg in Lower Franconia. 

The abbey was one of the first monasteries in the Main Franconian area to take special care of the poor, the sick and the infirm. 

After the death of her mother, Gertrud headed the abbey of Nivelles as abbess from 652 until her death.

Gertrude was very well-educated and was committed to the idea that girls should also read the Holy Scriptures.

She educated the Belgian national saint, Saint Gudula of Brussels, in the monastery of Nivelles. 

In addition to caring for the sick, she also fed travelling pupils and journeymen. 

She had a hospital built for Irish travelling monks she had called to her monastery. 

So Gertrud soon became known as the "patron saint of the country road".

The commemoration day in the Roman Catholic Church is 17 March.

The old synagogue in Wattenscheid (today a part of the City of Bochum) was built between 1827 and 1829.

It was inaugurated in spring 1829. Until 1870 the synagogue was a branch parish of the Israelite parish of Hattingen.

The synagogue was burned down by the National Socialists on the morning of 10 November 1938.

From November 1941, all Jews still living in Wattenscheid were forcibly accommodated in the Jewish elementary school.

On 28 April and 11 May 1942 they were deported by rail to Eastern Europe and murdered by the National Socialists.