
Prague: A European capital cobbled with Jewish gravestones - rmason
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-46845131
======
richardhod
Berlin has 10cm^2 brass memorials set into the pavements where (mostly) Jewish
people, sometimes whole families, were killed during the Third Reich. Look
down and you will see them everywhere there. It's a touching and present
reminder, to give pause for perspective in everyday life.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein)

[edited for accuracy]

~~~
chrisseaton
I'm never sure how appropriate memorials are on the ground, where people will
walk on them, will be sick on them, dogs will go to the toilet on them, etc. I
guess they also get worn down much more quickly.

~~~
andrepd
Now that you mention it, it's kind of thought-provoking. These same streets
where people now live their lives, walk the dog, party get drunk and puke on
the streets, just "yesterday" there were _horryfing_ things happening there.
It's easy to forget, and we do forget, that those living nightmares can and
did happen, when we today live so free and safe.

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jeffwass
Coincidentally just minutes ago I came out of a “parents learning session” at
my synagogue about the Czech Torah scrolls, ehich I didn’t know about
previously.

During he Holocaust, thousands of Czech scrolls taken from scattered
synagogues, to a main synagogue in Prague. An old rumour, though now thought
to be inaccurate, was that Hitler wanted to document the culture of the race
he eliminated.

Many of these scrolls have deterioated, some have been restored, and they are
now distributed on-loan to many Jewish communities around the world, not just
as working Torah’s but as part of the living story of persecution and
perseverance.

~~~
jeffwass
Really confused why someone felt the need to downvote that comment.

~~~
josefx
I feel a bit irritated by the fact that it gives us explicitly outdated
information ("an old rumor now thought to be inacurrate") without mentioning
the current thoughts behind it.

~~~
jeffwass
The latest idea to replace the “old rumour”, according the rabbi, is that some
of the initial collecting of Torah scrolls came from Jews hoping to preserve
the scrolls from their synagogues that were vandalised or destroyed by the
nazis.

But after a collection of Jewish artefacts and treasures was started (which
includes things like silver scroll crowns and plates and Yad pointers), the
nazis themselves became interested in gathering the relics hoping to extract
precious metals. So much of the silver is gone today, but amazingly the
collection of scrolls themselves remained relatively intact.

My synagogue has one of the scrolls, very badly damaged, which the rabbi
showed us this morning. There is something very powerful about seeing and
feeling a religious artifact hundreds of years old, originally from a Czech
Jewish community now destroyed and practically forgotten. Yet this Torah lives
on a living and breathing Jewish community today, where some of the Bar and
Bat Mitzvah students actually read from it.

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yread
Czech people don't have a lot of respect for graveyards in general, se this
one in Turnov

[https://cs.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soubor:Turnov-%C5%BEidovsk%C...](https://cs.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soubor:Turnov-%C5%BEidovsk%C3%BD-h%C5%99bitov2008a.jpg)

~~~
dandare
I am not surprised this monstrosity was build only one year after the Velvet
Revolution (meani g it must was planned and approved during the communism
era). Still, there was a very bitter public debate recently, before a Roma
concentration camp was expropriated and turned into a memorial
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lety_concentration_camp](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lety_concentration_camp)).

Needless to say, since the outbreak of Russia sponsored fake news and
propaganda, the Czech society is increasingly divided, with racism and
xenophobia on the raise.

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YeGoblynQueenne
In Thessaloniki, second largest Greek city, one can still find entire
tombstones embedded in houses' yards:

[http://valiacaldadog.blogspot.com/2009/02/blog-
post_3356.htm...](http://valiacaldadog.blogspot.com/2009/02/blog-
post_3356.html)

The blog post above explains that the Jewish year 5676 on one of the stones is
~1915 AD.

Thessaloniki was once the city with the largest Jewish population in Europe,
and the one with the largest Jewish cemetary (300,000 - 500,000 tombs) in the
world [1].

During the Nazi occupation, after the Nazis abducted the members of the
community and sent them to Auschwitz (with the collusion of the puppet
authorities and the Greek Orthodox church), the people of the city took the
tombstones from the cemetary and used them in their houses. They were also
used to line the cobbled streets of the city, but I couldn't find any pictures
online showing this clearly. Worse, it seems like the city's Aristoteleion
university was built on top of the cemetary grounds [1].

The story of the Jewish community's treatment by the Greek citizens of
Thessaloniki during the occupation fills me with shame, as a Greek woman. I
prefer to remember the actions of the Archbishop of Zakynthos, Chrystostome:
asked by the Nazis, in 1943, to provide a list with the names of all the
Jewish Zakynthians, the archbishop delivered a list with only two names: his
own and that of the mayor of the city. The two men had previously worked
together to help the Jewish inhabitants to escape, by providing them with
forged papers, etc [2,3].

________

[1] [https://abravanel.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/jewish-
cemetery-o...](https://abravanel.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/jewish-cemetery-of-
salonica-vandalized/)

From the English version:

 _Of course the city of Salonica (Thessaloniki) has a long tradition in
desecrating Jewish tombs – one needs only to visit many of its churches and
public squares which are paved with looted tombstones by the old Jewish
Cemetery. That particular cemetery, the largest Jewish cemetery in the world
with an area over 350 acres and tombs from the 2nd century CE, was destroyed
by the Municipality of Salonica in 1942 while his Jewish citizens were rounded
in the Baron Hirsch Ghetto before being sent to Auschwitz to be murdered
there. Or one can dig inside the campus of the Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki to find the bones of 300 /500.000 Jews who are still buried there
in the grounds the University desecrated to build its buildings._

[2]
[http://www.kathimerini.gr/832170/article/politismos/vivlio/t...](http://www.kathimerini.gr/832170/article/politismos/vivlio/to-8ayma-
ths-zakyn8oy) (Greek)

[3] [http://www.aish.com/ho/p/The-Jews-of-
Zakynthos.html](http://www.aish.com/ho/p/The-Jews-of-Zakynthos.html)

------
yostrovs
Can the Czech afford to have decency and replace the stones? How much could it
possibly cost? How are they not disgusted walking on those streets?

It's funny how stories like this are cause for some to be upset at being
reminded of the Holocaust. Yet the headstones are walked on daily. They Jews
are certainly reminded every day.

~~~
duaoebg
There aren’t that many Jews left there to be reminded.

~~~
yostrovs
Good point.

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bjourne
Modern people spend so little time thinking about death that they often are
incensed when they hear stories like these. For example, graveyard real estate
is at a premium. More people die than can be fit in them. When you die, your
corpse lies in the ground for a few years up to a decade at best. Then the
gravedigger digs up your remains, put them in the trash and the next corpse is
put in the hole. This is why grave digging requires a strong stomach -- it is
far from certain that the corpse has fully decomposed. The trash is hopefully
incinerated, providing energy for the living. Literally from Dust to Dust.

Same thing with tombstones which are recycled all the time. All larger
cemeteries have huge stacks of stones waiting to get crushed into gravel. I
cannot say if the practice in Communist countries specifically targeted Jewish
cemeteries and if it was therefore antisemitic. Now whether the antisemitic
part is not scrubbing the stones clean from inscriptions. Perhaps a large
number of Jewish cemeteries were derelict due to the dwindling number of
communities and it was easier to take stones from these?

~~~
esotericn
> When you die, your corpse lies in the ground for a few years up to a decade
> at best.

This isn't true for anyone I know of.

Those that can afford it have effectively permanent plots (until the
descendents die off, at least).

Those that can't, or choose not to, opt for cremation.

~~~
bjourne
Mea culpa. Apparently it depends a lot on the jurisdiction with more densely
populated countries offering shorter leases than sparsely populated ones. In
Europe, one to two decades seem common with options for relatives to extend
the lease. [http://www.talkdeath.com/cemetery-overcrowding-leading-
europ...](http://www.talkdeath.com/cemetery-overcrowding-leading-europe-
recycle-burial-plots/)

