Sadness pours over you when you visit the Old Jewish Cementery in Prague's Jewish Quarter. It was created in the 15th century when Jews were forbidden to bury their dead outside their own district. Here, 12,000 tombstones are visible, when in fact, it is estimated that there may be as many as 100,000 burials in all.
You see, the land lot is small. When the cementery became full and it was impossible for the Jews to purchase more land, they had no choice but to bury bodies on top of each other. They brought in soil to cover a layer of graves, removed the tombstones and placed them next to the new tombstones. It is believed that the graves are layered about 12 deep. This is why the markers are found so close together, sometimes almost stacked on top of each other, crooked like a mouthful of crowded teeth.
The oldest tombstone belongs to the poet Avigdor Kara who died in 1439. The marker that gets the most attention is that of Jehuda ben Bezadel, the famed Rabbi Loew claimed for creating a mythical being out of clay and brought it to life to protect the Jews from being expelled or killed. Even today, people leave little pieces of paper with wishes stuffed into the cracks of the tomb hoping the rabbi will grant them.
A new Jewish cementery was established in 1891 to solve the old cemenery's space problem. It is about 10 times bigger, but today is half empty. The generation it was built for was transported to Nazi death camps.
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