Quotes of the Day
It's Friday night, the eve of the Jewish sabbath. Jaroslav Haidler prays, eats a simple meal and then goes back to work at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Osoblaha, a tiny town in the northeastern corner of the Czech Republic. Armed with a flashlight, he crouches in front of one of the 300 or so tombstones, transcribes its inscription and makes notes on the shape and condition of the stone.
Haidler, 43, a part-Jewish theater-troupe director from Ústí nad Labem, a post-industrial city in the north of the country, has been documenting tombstones around the country since 1999 in an attempt to preserve what is in a sense the last surviving record of Jewish life in the region. "These stones are often the only archives left following destruction by the Nazis and communists," Haidler says. There are about 340 Jewish cemeteries in the Czech Republic, with as many as 200,000 tombstones — and Haidler intends to record them all. So far he has completed 30 cemeteries and estimates he will need another five to eight years to do the rest.
Haidler started haunting graveyards under communist rule when he used the tombstones as textbooks for his study of Hebrew. It was then that he discovered that, in addition to the customary dates and names, many stones carried colorful eulogies detailing the life and times of the deceased. One of his favorites: "Don't ask the stone about the man buried underneath. It won't attest to his fairness. Go back among the living and hear them praise him. It is in their mouths where his memory survives. It is in their hearts where his tombstone is sculpted." Though historians and genealogists will doubtless be among the chief benefactors of his work, Haidler is in it for these eulogies. "Compiling just the dates and names," he says, "would mean leaving out the greatest beauty of all: the poetry, the community's love of the Bible and the Torah, that shines through the eulogy."
Although Haidler has so far worked in obscurity, supported by a small circle of friends and enthusiasts, he takes his archive public on Sept. 29 with the launch of www.chewra.com. The website, an online database free to anyone with Internet access, contains personal data on the deceased, a photograph of the tombstone and a copy of the inscription (along with a translation into Czech) for each documented grave. English, German and Russian translations may follow. Other sections of the site explain things like Jewish burial practices and the significance of the religious symbols carved into the stones. Haidler's project is unique in the Czech Republic, both for its digital presentation and for its effort to preserve an aspect of Jewish culture that is prey to natural erosion and vandalism.
Though he now has backing in the form of cultural grants, Haidler still likes to camp out in graveyards, something he did in the past to save money. "There is nothing like waking up in a cemetery," he says. "For one thing, you are still alive. Then there is the sun, the stones — and the souls." For Haidler, documenting all the graves is just the beginning. His ultimate goal is a revival of Jewish culture and religion in the region. With few survivors left, Haidler has turned to the dead for help.
- JAN STOJASPAL/Osoblaha
- Secrets of the Cemetery