A Tale of Two Cemeteries

The cemeteries in Berlin and Josvainai (the village my mother came from in Lithuania) are very different and yet in some ways they have things in common. The cemetery in Berlin was the resting place of many important figures of German and Jewish history. The cemetery in Josvainai was the cemetery of a community that consisted of 200 Jewish people at its height.

The cemetery in Berlin is the oldest cemetery within the city borders. At the time the cemetery was established in 1671, it was outside the city walls, but in a neighborhood that had become Jewish mostly populated by Jews expelled from Vienna. It is not absolute but most agree that thousands were buried there from 1671 until 1827. It is unknown how old the Josvainai cemetery is. Many of the stones are eroded beyond reading.

Some of the most prominent people buried in the Berlin cemetery include Moses Mendelssohn, Veitel Heine Ephraim court Jew of Frederick the Great, and Herz Beer father of Giacomo Meyerbeer. As far as I know no one famous lived in Josvainai, just people like you or I.

The Jewish cemetery in Berlin is a park like setting with the Jewish High School in the background, the Mendelssohn School that is co-ed. During the Nazi period the tombstones were bulldozed, bones removed, and ironically many of the 100,000 German soldiers killed in the final battle of Berlin were buried in mass graves (on top of whatever Jewish bones were left). A bit ironic. There is a new Jewish cemetery outside the city center now.

At the entrance to the Berlin cemetery is a mosaic mural, created in 2013 as the 5th global peace wall, produced and created by Cityarts, "Young Minds Build Bridges Program". A plaque nearby says, "What does peace look like to you? Ask our children. That is exactly what Cityarts did. We engaged children around the globe, enabling them to share their visions and hopes for a future of peace. What emerged was this Mosaic Peace Wall. This artistic offering expresses the visions of students from twelve schools in Berlin and youth organizations, representing 62 countries."

Detail of Mosaic Peace Wall

These two grave stones in the Berlin cemetery, recovered after demolition of the cemetery are from the original graves, late 18th century. Since they came from Vienna they would have been a husband and wife from a prominent family. Notice the stones left on these graves. No flowers here.

The gravestone gives us a lot of information about who these people were, when they lived and were buried.

This is the only gravestone standing in the Berlin cemetery, and is not an original. Notice that the inscription is in German, not in Hebrew or Yiddish. It is not located in exactly the right place either but was re-erected here because of Mendelssohn's fame.

After WWII the Berlin cemetery was returned to the Jewish community and when repairs were made some stones were found and attached to one wall of the cemetery. They are not located in the correct place for where the bones of these individuals might have been buried.

The small cemetery of the village (shtetl) of Josvainai is marked by this stele which says in Yiddish, "In this place was before 1941 the Jewish cemetery of Josvainai". Different from the Berlin cemetery this one has no fence, something traditional to Jewish cemeteries.

The view looking back from the Josvainai cemetery, we had to cross this field on a beautiful though cloudy and windy day.

My mother visited the village cemetery in the early 1990s and it was totally overgrown and unkempt. It was gratifying to see that someone is taking care of it, and there is even a directional sign on the road marking the turn off for the cemetery.

It was a little bit of challenge to find the Josvainai cemetery, so we went to the Christian cemetery on the outskirts of town, found two gardeners who knew exactly where it was. They are likely the ones tending it and helped us find it.

The gravestone of my grandfather, Yerachme'el Lev. He died in 1929 when my mother was a baby.

The cemetery is directly across the river from the village, a separation that was common in those days. Both this one and the Berlin cemetery were put at a distance from people's homes. Though now, the Berlin cemetery is in the heart of things and in Josvainai this is the only trace of a Jewish existence here.