The Jewish Garden

A character in The Unbearable Lightness of Being describes Bohemian cemeteries as gardens - with grass and wild flowers growing between and on the grave stones, all but consuming the more modest markers. It turns out that was less of a well worded opinion or personal impression than I read it to be. In fact, an ancient Jewish burial ground, discovered in an excavation in Prague, was dubbed "the Jewish Garden." We visited its descendent, the Old Jewish Cemetery.
It had a fairly exorbitant entrance fee and a tour group moved in through the narrow entrance as we approached the ticket office. There will be other cemeteries in Bohemia, I thought, maybe I should skip this one. But it's Europe's oldest surviving Jewish cemetery and it's hard to pass up "Europe's oldest surviving Jewish" anything, to be honest. It, along with the surrounding synagogues, were preserved by the Nazis for a "museum of an extinct race."
Jewish law prohibits the destruction of graves and the removal of tombstones. So, when room inevitably began to run out in the cemetery, soil was layered atop the existing plots and the stones were moved up to the fresh dirt. This continued to happen for centuries, resulting in approximately 12,000 visible headstones and 100,000 graves beneath. Twelve layers of burials dating back to the 15th century.
Some clusters lean against each other, some are blown back or forward in unison, like a field of sunflowers bent toward the sun. The ones above reminded me of a family portrait. Rarely would you see any markings left on the weathered stones and something about the anonymity made it all less morose. Some sections looked like nothing but a rock garden.
It felt redemptive, somehow, to be here. When I attempted to visit family graves in Seda, Lithuania, the cemetery was nowhere to be found. The temple that I thought would help mark the spot was a loose structure of decomposing wood that a moderately big bad wolf could have blown right down. Time and time again, it felt like there were ways to connect to the memory of Holocaust victims and Holocaust survivors, but none of Europe's long line of Jews who didn't fall into one of those two groups. The cemetery in the Kazimierz neighborhood of Krakow, Poland was another wonderful exception, but something about this one was just so beautiful. Human history almost indistinguishable from nature.

Lychakiv Cemetery

This massive cemetery in L'viv rises up towards a high knoll, with a lot of convoluted, twisting paths between the plots and mausoleums. It has a strange and complex history, involving various wars and countries.

The cemetery has been around since 1787, was expanded twice and has tens of thousands of people interred in its tombs. Much of what is there today, however, is fairly new or has been restored by Polish residents of the city - the cemetery is important to Poles because the defenders of the city during the first world war are buried here. After this region was annexed by the USSR, many of the polish graves were desecrated and the military cemetery was turned into a truck depot. In 1975, the place was declared a historic landmark and rebuilding began - though not with the express approval of the Ukrainian government.

Many of the more modern graves are adorned with fancy statues, often likenesses of the people underneath. We named this one "the Tom Jones of Lychakiv."

There are parts of the necropolis that are decidedly run-down - which is a good thing for a graveyard, I think.

The place must be very lush in the summer; there are vines and long, dead grass everywhere - also a number of nice old trees. Right now, though, the only color was supplied by fake flowers and by the odd painted statue.

These graves stood at the summit of the hill, all made of metal and very similar. They are from one short period during 1916, which is two years before the attack that was commemorated in the destroyed military plot. We're not sure which battle these soldiers died in, but their graves were apparently spared by the Ukrainians.

We were mostly alone while we walked around, but as we were leaving we noticed a few more live bodies getting off the tram. There are a few flower shops set up near the entrance, though most of what we could see for sale was plastic.

Kazimierz

Kazimierz is a neighborhood in the south of Krakow, originally separated from the main city by the Vistula river. The Vistula has been diverted, the riverbed filled in, and the district connected with Krakow proper. It was historically the Jewish quarter of the city, and some 60,000 Jews lived there in 1931. Today, there are only about 200 Jews in all of Krakow. It's a fascinating place, and we spent an interesting day poking around.
We came for the market, which we had thought was more of an antiques/flea market, but turned out to be a "cloth market." The "cloth" that they're hawking is really used clothing, mostly polyester, sold alongside a few booths with knockoff perfumes and costume jewelry. It was fun, crowded and ugly. People were very competitive about their rummaging. Rebecca, surprising me, didn't buy a single thing.
We had coffee at this little cafe, which we assume was made to look old - the look was too studied to be real. It was a great place, nonetheless, and was popular with nannies. At least, we think they were nannies. The women we saw might have been mothers, but their youth suggested otherwise. The neighborhood has a lot of places like this - it's a recently gentrified quarter, with a bohemian vibe that's on the verge of becoming gauche.
This cat was on a leash.
Down an alleyway, near a restaurant, we noticed this couple. They're either calmly pondering what's about to happen to them, or they're having wedding pictures taken. Rebecca learned, later, that this alleyway was featured in the film Schindler's List, as well as other movies. It seemed like a strange place to take photos, but they looked great.
We stopped in at a Jewish cemetery before we left, which was sobering. The yard is walled off on all sides, the only entrance is through a small synagogue. There was a man at a table, charging admission and making sure that everyone was wearing a yamulka before they entered the holy site. Fortunately, he had one that I could borrow, and we were able to go in. The synagogue itself was crowded - a tour group - but the cemetery was nearly empty, and we wandered amongst the tombstones for quite a while.
The graves predate the holocaust, and some appeared to be very old. It was difficult to tell exactly how old they were because the inscriptions were all in Hebrew, but it was clear from the condition of the stone that they had stood for at least a century. This is about the only thing that's left of the Jewish community in Kazimierz, as it was emptied during the war. The buildings were claimed by non-Jewish Poles, and most of the old community was destroyed. It's amazing to think about this place in those terms - the 60,000 Jewish residents here made up a quarter of the pre-war population of greater Krakow, and they're almost entirely gone. We wondered, actually, what or who had preserved the cemetery? It seems incredible that the tombs weren't desecrated and that the synagogue is still there.

Rebecca went back down today and bought a used, leather purse that she likes a lot. I'm glad because it would have been a shame to waste such a great cloth market.

Wszystkich Świętych (All Saints Day)

All Saints Day is also Day of the Dead In Poland, it's a national holiday. Yesterday, the first of November, we were in the countryside outside Krakow and experienced a little bit of it.We knew that it was a big deal - our friend Piotr told us about it - but we had thought that it was going to be centered around a few religious sites, or in a few towns. We didn't realize that we were going to see hordes of people near every cemetery. There were makeshift parking lots set up along roadsides, scores of candle and flower vendors. We had to slow down in every town, people were clogging the roads. As it got closer to dusk, and we were heading home for the day, the crowds began to dissipate a little. We were able to find a spot to park in the town of Chrobrego and we walked down to the village graveyard.
There were still a lot of people there, and most graves were covered with candles and flowers. It was a semi-somber gathering of people. The clothes were clearly "sunday best," and voices were hushed - but people were smiling to each other and seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Some graves were more decorated than others. People travel long distances, we've heard, to visit the graves of relatives and many make journeys to more than one cemetery. They place candles on the graves so that the spirits of the dead can make their way through the night.
The candles were beautiful, especially as the sun set. The whole place was lit up, the bouquets were illuminated in strange ways and the breeze began to die down. As we were leaving, it was almost silent.
Daylight savings time happens earlier here, and it has been getting dark very suddenly. Driving home we passed a few more graveyards, all of them lit up, the candles very bright amongst the stones and trees. It was a surreal, beautiful experience.

Urban Graveyard

During a stroll through Berlin, we found ourselves trapped in this amazing cemetery. We walked in thinking it was a park - and it took us a while to find a door back out to the street. It's called the St.-Marien and St.-Nikolai-Friedhof, because it is the church graveyard for the congregations of St. Mary and St. Nicholas, obviously.
The interesting thing about it was the vegetation and the general state of neglect. Trees and brush were growing all through it, a number of gravestones had fallen over or were broken and the paths were almost impossible to follow in some places. The walls around the place were crumbling and a number of the mausoleums looked like they were about to cave in.

This is a stack of gravestones, so apparently somebody has cleaned up a little. The reason apparently, that it's in such a bad state: the graves were mostly destroyed during the war. I'm not sure why I didn't think of that.

According to German wikipedia, the headquarters of the Nazi Youth was located next door, and during the bombardments the defending Nazi troops barricaded themselves behind the gravestones. I'm a little confused about how they did that, but it's on de.wikipedia.org, so it must be true. At least in Germany.

It was a very pretty walk, actually, with almost nobody else around. The graves that were standing were quite pretty, and all the vegetation actually enhanced the place. It was peaceful, at least.
Walking back to the hostel, we passed another graveyard, of sorts.