Update: there is a bit more about the Cmentarz in the comments section of this post. The two photos I talk about in the comments are ones I left out, so here they are:
Monday, 7 February 2011
Jewish Cemetry in Wroclaw
Some photos from my visit at the weekend.
The cmentarz is at Ul. Slezna 37 and the price of entry is 7 PLN
Update: there is a bit more about the Cmentarz in the comments section of this post. The two photos I talk about in the comments are ones I left out, so here they are:
Update: there is a bit more about the Cmentarz in the comments section of this post. The two photos I talk about in the comments are ones I left out, so here they are:
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Seven PLN to visit a cemetery?
ReplyDeleteI understand that it is not likely to be a currently used burial site -- is it like a museum?
Surely there must be people somewhere in the world with relations buried there. Did you see any signs of individual graves being commemorated, flowers, candles, or whatever Jewish people do.
One of the strangest things, these remains, artifacts of a people once numerous, and now gone.
Nice photo documentation.
I like these photos...very atmospheric - how are things? How long have you been there now? Would you say you are happier now? More content? xxx
ReplyDeleteJust left you a comment but not sure if it stuck? xxx
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. The cmetarz is about four hectares large, so not particularly huge, and when I went there was no obvious museum. There is a poster showing some of the more famous 'residents' as well.
ReplyDeleteOut of the several hundred graves I think there was probably less than 5 that had the flowers and candles. The most recent dated death was of a Schottlander in Montreux in 1975. The photo is one of the ones I have posted up. The other members of this family were murdered, presumably, in 1942. Overall the cmetarz felt lonely, abandoned, a relic.
I find them really affecting and interesting as well. A whole culture, tradition and history wiped out. Walking amongst the ivy and reading the names and inscriptions and wondering what might have been, and who once stood here weeping for their loved ones, imagining that they too would one day be placed there. Certainly never imagining that the Judaism in Poland would be almost non-exist within only a few years. Eerie.
I always find it strange that the Nazis never destroyed Jewish cemetries (well, not the ones I've been to in Warsaw and Wroclaw) but seemed to leave them alone. Respect for the dead? Hardly seems to fit the type. Odd.
Curious Cat - I arrived on 6th October 2010 so four months so far. I haven't really regretted it seriously once, I am so glad I took the decision to go abroad.
ReplyDeleteIt has really helped me re-focus and reconsider exactly what it is I want myself to be out of whatever life I get. A bit of distance from the madding crowd has given me a new perspective on life.
I also love Poland, a lot more than I thought I would. More thoughts on engagement with civil and wider society are swilling round my head and I might write something on that soon, in fact.
Paddy
I have been here two years (this month) and still refuse to go to the Jewish Cemetary. I just can't bring myself to pay to see it, I didn't go to the one in Prague for exactly the same reason. I don't think I could ever pay to see a cemetary. I mean I there are stereotypes in life completely unfounded and based on very small amounts of relevent and current information, but the stereotype (especially in Poland) about Jews loving money can be pointed at here. Where as you can go to Powązki a far more attractive cemetary with great Polish history for free. I know which I have and I will continue to do. :) A bigger question how come there is the word anti-semitic and not other groups of people like antiantipodean?
ReplyDeleteHard to say for certain without speaking to the Cemetery management themselves but I would suggest it's much more likely to be because there isn't a community that actually uses the cemetery any more, it having been wiped out.
ReplyDeletePayment is probably for maintenance and restoration rather than for profit. After all it's now a monument to a history and tradition of a once flourishing community within Poland. On that basis I felt my 7pln was well spent.
There could be the word antiantipodean if you wanted there to be, I guess, If you wait another thousand years there may well be!!