World Jewish News

Jewish cemeteries part of Czech history.

Jewish cemeteries are never located in the centre of a Czech town or village, but mostly at their fringes or even farther.
They are often dilapidated, but they keep a magic atmosphere. They relate stories from a different part of history of the Czech Republic.
"I try not to let the memory of old cemeteries to sink into oblivion," Jaroslav "Achab" Haidler, who has been charting in detail Jewish cemeteries in the Czech Republic at the webpage http://www.chewra.com/index.asp, told CTK.
There are roughly 340 Jewish cemeteries in the Czech Republic, 320 independent and 20 as parts of local cemeteries.
The biggest cemeteries are in Prague-Josefov, Mikulov and Trebic, South Moravia.
One can see the oldest, 15th-century gravestones in Prague-Josefov and Kolin, Central Bohemia. The oldest 16th-century cemeteries have been preserved in Brandys nad Labem, Central Bohemia, Ivancice, South Moravia, Libochovice, North Bohemia, and Mlada Boleslav, Central Bohemia.
In the museums in Brno, Cheb, West Bohemia, and Znojmo, South Moravia, one can also see gravestones from the 14th century that are from the cemeteries abolished long ago.
Jews started settling the area of present-day Czech Republic in the early 10th century, but their social and legal position was always very uncertain. Due to their distinctive character, they were often exposed to hostility of other population, and were prey to pogroms and expulsion from towns and villages.
They were only fully emancipated in 1848. Jews considerably contributed to the advancement of the Czech Lands as witnessed by the following personalities: Rothschild, Petschek, Moser, Mahler, Freud, Husserl and Kafka.
The biggest number of Jews lived in the Czech Lands at the close of the 19th century (some 140,000 in 250 towns and villages) and the number still reached some 120,000 in the late 1930s.
During World War Two, 90 percent of Czech Jews fell victim to the Holocaust. After the war, some 20,000 Jews were in the Czech Republic, but most of them they gradually emigrated.
At present, there are ten Jewish communities in the Czech Republic with some 3000 members.
In the 20th century, a substantial part of the cemeteries was destroyed by the Nazis, but even more were partly or totally destroyed and abolished after the 1948 Communist coup.
At present, the overwhelming majority of the cemeteries is located in the towns and villages with no Jewish community.
Until the mid-19th centuries, texts on Jewish gravestones were only in Hebrew. Then they were Hebrew-German or Hebrew-Czech and in the 20th century also only Czech or German. However, they were almost invariably denoted by five Hebrew letters, an abbreviation of the traditional formula at the burial.
The gravestones were mostly put up only one year after the death. Pebbles are placed on the gravestones when people visit them.
In Slovakia, there are 693 Jewish cemeteries. They are situated in almost every town and in many villages throughout the country.
The Central Association of Jewish Communities in Slovakia has repaired some cemeteries, also with the help of foreign Jews who have their relatives buried there.
Some Jewish cemeteries in Slovakia are still used for their original purpose. In Bratislava, burials still take place at both the orthodox and Neologic cemeteries.
"There were 28 burials between September 2006 and June 2007," Peter Salner from the Bratislava Jewish community told CTK.

Источник: praguemonitor.com