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A walk through a Jewish cemetery [1]
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Date: 2022-11-05
One cemetery very near my childhood home was a Jewish cemetery. Some things I found there were beautiful, some were heartbreaking. I’ll let the photos and markers speak for themselves and for the people being remembered. All pictures are mine.
This is the old part of the cemetery, mostly late 19th century-early 20th century burials.
At one time I knew the significance of the tree, if it was only for specific circumstances or if it was a choice available to anyone. I’ve forgotten over the years, and I can’t find the information online anymore. The Star of David made of barbed wire is self-explanatory, representing the camps. The tree means surviving to thrive.
This one breaks my heart. You see that the pebbles are all on one side of the marker. That’s because the husband was still living when I took this picture in 2013 (he died in 2019), but there have been many visitors to the wife’s grave. The wife’s parents are buried in this cemetery. The names on the front of the stone, though, are the parents and younger brother of the husband. I’ll tell their story in tomorrow’s diary.
Jewish War Veterans of the United States
As with most cemeteries of any age, there are many children, from a time before vaccines and medical care. Interestingly, there is a space at one end of this cemetery reserved for small children and criminals. All burials were in the 19th century. They were no longer using this section as many graves were unmarked and they don’t want to disturb unknown graves.
Very old stones were beginning to wear very badly, so a photographic record was a help.
I met many visitors while I was working in this cemetery, and I heard many sad stories. One young woman, who I won’t identify or show her grave, was 18 when she found she was pregnant with the child of a married man. She drank sulfuric acid, not knowing what else to do. Other families lost children to an epidemic of cholera or diphtheria.
I photographed over 3,000 grave markers in this cemetery. For every marker that had no stones, I left one. If you visit a Jewish grave, look around. I’ve always found large urns of stones, there for the use of visitors. Don’t try to dig up a little rock from the ground, pull a piece from the stone wall, or take one from another grave. (Yes, the caretaker says those are consistent problems.) I kept a bag of decorative stones in my car, but if you don’t have your own, the cemetery provides them.
The cemetery no longer allows standing markers. Too many have fallen over. Newer markers are more or less uniform.
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