Cemeteries of Lodz and Prague
April 17th, 2010 by John WolfeAlways on the lookout for amazing cemetery locations, I discovered the following vids on YT. First up is a short, but incredible slide show of the New Jewish Cemetery in Lodz, Poland, established in 1892.
Source: YT user, snakeeyesPL
Up next is the Old Jewish Cemetery, located in the Czech Republic’s capital city of Prague. The vid starts out around the location, but eventually makes its way to the burial grounds, where the amount of tombstones are overwhelming.
According to Wikipedia, the tombs are layered on top of one another, with an estimated 12,000 visible headstones and as many as 100,000 burials in all. The oldest surviving stone dates back to 1439, belonging to a rabbi and poet named Avigdor Kara, but some scholars believe the cemetery has been used for burials since the fifth century!
Source: YT user, dagschweinerei
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April 17th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Wow-now I have a name for that second cemetery! I have a bunch of photos I archived from online of cemeteries and I had this one photo that every time I look at it, I thought for sure it had to be a fake cemetery because the headstones are all atop of each other. I compared the picture–and that’s the place–most definitely! Very cool. Now, I want to go film a cemetery at night and get a sound file of whispering voices…I’m doing a girl’s trip next month with lots of cemetery stops. I’m going to do it! You’ve inspired me. Thanks!
April 17th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
jeez…both places are so cool. I really like the first one in Lodz since the plant life has taken over most of the gravestones…another really good find John.
April 18th, 2010 at 2:53 am
autumnforest,
Very glad to hear this entry helped confirm the photos you have are real! I forgot to mention in the post that I saw a commercial for a program called “House of Life” on my local PBS channel yesterday. The program is about the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague and that’s what prompted me to dig around on YT looking for the second video. I just finished watching House of Life a few minutes ago and learned some more interesting facts about the cemetery.
In the film, they said that each layer of graves were marked by tombstones, but they were eventually covered over to create more plots. So, even though there are 12,000 visible tombstones on the surface, there are thousands of headstones buried under the ground as well! When they started burying people in the cemetery, they must have dug really deep, anticipating the lack of space and knowing the plots would be stacked on top of one another.
Your trip sounds like it’s going to be really interesting. Please, let me know what you find.
frightnight,
Great to hear from you! Yeah, the pictures of Lodz reminds me a little of Highgate Cemetery in London with many of the stones being covered by the natural environment.
April 18th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Whoa! I’ve got to say that in the second video I enjoyed the build up of actually seeing the cemetery and then once exposed, sharing a dramatic piece in the music. It was nicely done. The Whoa comes from ALL of the countless number of tombstones, yikes!! If it were not for your detailed description as to what we are about to see I would have thought I was looking at a place where they SELL the head stones and not where the dead are buried. The place where my family is buried have a section of land fenced off and tombstones laying right up against the other making up rows of about 25 rows or so with about 30 headstones in each row. It’s really strange to see at first but you can rest easy in knowing the stones are for sale. THIS video, that particular place I would NOT be resting so easy upon finding it. I’ve never heard or have ever seen such a thing. That was incredible John!
Having the huge green thumb I have, I adored how the green ivy (?) in the first video look in taking over the head stones. Wow. Where I live, that would never be allowed. I say this respectfully but I sort of like the look of the head stones covered in green like that. It looks like hundreds of little green hills.
Back to the second video though, I tell you, you know how in horror movies when the teenagers explore the cemetery at night ground breaking corpses start to rise from their grave?……Just imagine how many ground breakers would be breaking through other skeletons to eventually get to the top!!! Eeeeeekk! I’m gonna have to share that video with my Mom, she just wouldn’t believe me if I tried to explain it to her.
April 19th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
If there is another cemetery that’s practiced similar styles of burial, I haven’t come across it in all of my searches. I’m far from being well versed in the history of graveyards throughout the world, but in the many hours I’ve spent watching YT cemetery vids, I’ve yet to find anything quite like this location in Prague. It does look like it would be a location for selling tombstones!
Just like you, Goldie, in videos and pictures, I’m partial to seeing the ivy and maybe even some moss covering the stones. However, whenever I visit a cemetery in person, I always work on cleaning up any stones whose epitaphs are obscured by grass or weeds, so I probably would want to do the same to plants if I were to visit a place like Lodz. Maybe it’s better that I don’t go to extremely old locations like Highgate then!
Thanks for your great comments and for watching.