Cemetery Archives | Page 2 of 8 | World Jewish Travel

Jewish Northern Cemetery (Mosaisk Nordre Begravelsesplads)

The Jewish Northern Cemetery in Nörrebro was formerly the principal Jewish cemetery in Copenhagen, Denmark. It has an area of 13,500 square metres and contains contains some 5,500 burials.

Many prominent Jewish families are buried here such as the parents of Nobel prize winner Niels Bohr, the grandfather of famous comedian and pianist Viktor Borge and the Bing family who started the company known today as Royal Copenhagen Porcelain.

The oldest burial in the cemetery is from 1694. The cemetary expanded to its current size in 1854. The last burial in The Jewish Northern Cemetery was in 1967.

Since 1886 Jews have mainly been buried at Vestre Mosaic Cemetery which is in use today.

The Jewish cemetery of Oguz

The Oguz Old Jewish Cemetery has not lasted to the present time day. The early twentieth-century shifts, the coup, and the repression of the clerics and religious servants, followed by the war, had to have repercussions on the cemetery’s destruction. In addition, the Oguz Jewish cemetery is situated on a deciduous forest mountainside. The old graves were washed away by rains and floods, and tree roots ended up moving the tombstones, hiding them beneath the ruins. As result, the old graves are barely visible.

Rahimov Karim, through his father’s will, facilitated the dissection and construction of a new cemetery in 1930. The territory of the cemeteries now has trails and gazebos for visitors to rest. The memorial to the Great Patriotic War participants

Muju cemetery

Although Jews began
to leave Muju in the 1860s, no one remained in the village after the unrest of
1918, when they were threatened by Armenians and fled to different parts of the
country. During that time, the village’s Jewish cemetery was also destroyed.
Only a few graves from as recently as the 1910s have survived. It has now been
restored, and the land has been cleared and fenced in. On a separate small stone
podium, small headstones are displayed. When people didn’t have enough funds,
they erected small tombstones and replaced them with larger ones when they
could.

Gisory Cemetery and grave of Rabbi Gershon

Gisori is one of the main neighborhoods of the Red Settlement. Gisori is one of several neighborhoods that make up Red Village. Former residents of this neighborhood are laid to rest in Gisori Cemetery, one of Red Village’s oldest cemeteries, located on the hill’s steep slope. The earliest gravestones in this cemetery were erected between 1807 and 1814. They are approximately 80cm tall and made of fieldstone, with inscriptions chiseled into the stone slab. Other early 19th-century tombstones are plain rectangular stela. Simple ornaments in the form of an open rosette first appeared on stones in the mid-nineteenth century, and those from the second half of the 19th century are adorned with leaves and David’s stars. The inscriptions are framed by a pointed arch. A pointed arch frames the inscriptions.

Via Wiel Jewish cemetery

The most ancient Jewish cemetery remaining in Padua is located in via Wiel. It was used from the 16th until the 18th century and it is located outside the Medieval city walls, but protected by 16th century bastions. It was enlarged in 1653 thanks to Salomone Marini, rabbi of the “Università degli ebrei Portoghesi di Padova” (“University of Portuguese Jews in Padua”). The cemetery hosts, among many burials, the tomb of Meir Katzenellenbogen. He was born in Prague in 1473 and died in Padua in 1585. He is the author of the “Responsa”, in which he explains the role of the rabbis of his age as Doctors of the Law rather than intermediaries between the Faithful and God. Rav Meir’s and his son Samuel’s (a talmudic rabbi himself) tombs, are visited by people from all over the world as shown by the small stones put on the tombstone.

Another famous tombstone is the one of Abram Catalan, a doctor from Padua; during the 1630-31 plague epidemic he was commissioned, with three other Jewish doctors, to watch life conditions in the Ghetto, taking the necessary measures to contain the contagion. In that period 722 people lived inside the ghetto of Padua: 634 of them were affected by the plague and 421 died. Those dead were probably buried in mass graves as no evidence has been found inside the cemetery.

Jewish Cemetery of Pisa

The Jewish cemetery of Pisa is located in an attractive position just outside the section of city walls surrounding Piazza dei Miracoli, which is why in the twentieth century numerous Jews from other cities wanted to be buried here. It is one of the oldest preserved Jewish cemeteries still in use. It was purchased in 1674, and followed three previous burial grounds in the history of the Jewish community in Pisa. The oldest one dates back to the thirteenth century and was next to the Porta Nuova (New Gate) where epigraphs have been found carved into the city walls. A second one, listed in 1330 and perhaps used until the sixteenth century, was further south, on land belonging to the da Pisa family. The third, mentioned in surveys from 1618 and 1622, was also along the western walls, to the left of Porta Nuova. It seems to have remained in use for a short period until 1674, when the Grand Duke Ferdinando II requested the land for another purpose and offered the area of the current cemetery in exchange.
The cemetery houses tombs from every period, most of them single graves. The oldest ones were simple consistently with the Jewish tradition, often belong to Jews of Iberian origins, descended from Spanish and Portuguese exiles who had been expelled from their countries in the late fifteenth century and welcomed a century later by the Grand Duke Ferdinando I with his so-called “Livornina” letters of invitation. In the late nineteenth century, when there was a tendency to assimilate with the dominant culture’s customs, elaborate monumental tombs in the popular styles of the time became more common.
A plaque on the wall of the hall of rituals commemorates the Jews who were deported and killed in the Nazi death camps, along with the victims of the Casa Pardo Roques massacre.

Selestat Synagogue

Sélestat is an ancient community, which disappeared in the 16th century. It was not reconstituted at the 19th century. The oratory, dating from 1836 and installed at the Poêle des Laboureurs, was replaced by a synagogue, built in 1890. The latter, ransacked by the Nazis, was restored after the war without the original dome. The rabbinate of Sélestat dates from 1866 and replaces that of Muttersholtz.

In the 14th century the community was relatively large, judging by the size of the Jewish quarter. The synagogue was located in an alleyway, which is still visible today, next to the “pharmacie du Soleil” in the “rue des Clefs” (then “Judengasse”) and which connected with the “rue Ste-Barbe” (then “Schmiedgasse”). The name of Rabbi Ahron, to whom people came from Strasbourg to study the sacred texts, and especially that of his son, the famous Rav Schemouel Schlettstadt, who directed the yeshivah (talmudic school) of Strasbourg and is known as a compiler and decision-maker, have been preserved from this century.

The synagogue having been destroyed in 1470 to make way for the former St. Barbe arsenal, the community acquired, through the intermediary of the Magistrate, the former Poële des Laboureurs to establish its new place of worship. This building can still be seen at no. 3 Rue Ste-Barbe (rear part of the Boespflug building). The expression “auf der Judschul” (which previously referred only to the Place Ste-Barbe) was commonly used to designate the future Rue des Juifs, which became Rue Ste-Barbe in 1910.

After several waves of persecutions and expulsions, notably in 1349, during the Black Death, when the Jews of Western Europe were accused of having poisoned the wells, they were definitively expelled from Sélestat around 1650. However, Jewish merchants and showmen were authorized to come and practice their trade at the annual fairs as well as the weekly markets. This situation lasted until the Revolution. In 1622, on the other hand, the Jews of Bergheim, Ribeauvillé, Scherwiller and Dambach founded the present Israelite cemetery in Sélestat. It had to be enlarged several times afterwards. This is where Reisel Sée, whose filial love was immortalized by the moralists of the Revolution, was later buried. In 1890, the architect of the city of Selestat, Alexandre Stamm (1835-1906), designed a new building.

It has a central plan, like many Rhine synagogues, and is in the Romanesque-Byzantine style. It is a beautifully colored building with alternating pink sandstone, light sandstone and brick. The dome on a drum “with oculus” which decorated it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1940 and was not rebuilt. During this restoration, the old ritual bath (Mikveh) from 1836, part of an earlier building, was discovered in the basement.

The Hebrew inscription above the main door means: “This is the door of the Lord. The righteous shall pass through it”.

Image credit:
© Ralph Hammann – Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
I, Olevy, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The Sighet Jewish Cemetery

The Sighet Jewish Cemetery is about 300 years old, however many of the original tombstones are not to be found any more due to weather erosion and the materials the tombstones were made of. Sighet was the capital of Chassidut movement, frequently visited by Jews from all around Europe. Today, many Chassidim are coming to pay homage the “Famous Rabbis Ohel” many feel that writing notes, praying and making a pilgrimage will cure their health conditions, bring a match to single persons and so on.

The Cemetery of Saverne

In the 17th century, a cemetery of nearly one hectare was granted to the Jews on the wasteland of the Sandberg, whose name was changed to Judenberg. This cemetery was enclosed in the 18th century and is still in use. Although the Revolution caused some damage, there are some beautiful baroque tombs with engraved shells and some impressive headstones.

Rosenwiller Cemetery

A charming wine-growing village, Rosenwiller is located in the hills above Rosheim, surrounded by hills rich with especially diverse wildlife and plants. At the edge of the woods, the Jewish Cemetery, one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Alsace, contains over 6,000 tombs featuring highly original sun patterns on the gravestones. A stroll through the vineyards will give you the chance to admire the panoramic views of the plain, before going to taste the various grape types of Alsace wine, which have been grown here since the 6th century.

Site Tag: Cemetery