Originally used by the hospital as farmland for grazing milk cows, the area was converted into a temporary cemetery during the Arab siege of Jerusalem in 1948.

Most graves were transferred to permanent cemeteries after the war, but a handful remain, notably those of several prominent Jerusalem rabbis and the founding director of Shaare Zedek Hospital, Dr. Moshe Wallach.

The cemetery is located on the north side of Shazar Boulevard, between Nordau and Agrippas Streets.

[3] Since the Sanhedria Cemetery was operated under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Kehilat Yerushalayim chevra kadisha (burial society), founded in 1939 by Zionist leaders and moderate rabbis of the Old Yishuv, many Haredi residents of the Old Yishuv refused to use it, prompting the need for another burial ground in Jerusalem.

[4] In March 1948, the chevra kadisha of the Perushim and Ashkenazim asked Shaare Zedek Hospital director Dr. Wallach, an activist in the Agudath Israel Orthodox Jewish movement,[5] for permission to erect a temporary burial ground on land beside his hospital.