Prague's Jewish Cemeteries> Travels

Being in Prague at the moment I considered getting a head start on the Super Army and collecting some of Kafka’s DNA. (I then decided against this as he would probably just bum everybody out) He is in fact buried here in the New Jewish Cemetery.

The Jewish cemeteries in Prague are pretty interesting and well worth a visit. The old one is amazing, located in the old Jewish ghetto, it was the only place Prague Jews were allowed to bury their dead from 1439-1787. There are about 12,000 jagged, weathered tombstones in this small space, but many, many more bodies (over 200,000) are buried here, as tombs had to be piled on top of one another. In fact, a good part of the cemetery is on a mound that is made up of graves that have built upwards over time.

In 1787 the Jews were allowed to have a new cemetery and this served them until 1890. The 1787-1890 cemetery was heartlessly removed and replaced by a (haunted?) parking lot by the communists in the 1970’s.

The new Jewish cemetery, which is set alongside a very large Christian one, has tombstones dating back to 1890. The sad thing is there are very few tombstones that date beyond WW2 as most of the Jews of Prague were killed in the Holocaust. This means that many of the entombed here had and have no descendants to visit their graves. This is visually demonstrated by the ivy that covers the ground and trees.