Visiting cemeteries

 

know it's not everyone's idea of a holiday highlight, but I've always enjoyed going to visit the big cemetery in any place that we stayed more than a day or two. And sometimes you just find that you've stumbled on it on the way past. Cro was always very interested too. It shows you how people in that place think they should honour their dead.

The one in Lisbon is great, looking out over the river below. Pere Lachaise in Paris is great too, with everyone trying to outdo each other in tomb glory. Abbey Park in London is worth a coule of hours of anyone's time.

But today's cemetery was a bit more melancholy - though still wonderful in it's assertion of the memory and value of those loved humans buried there. It is the 'Cimitirul Evreiesc', the Jewish cemetery in Iași, Romania. 

I thought it might be only a small and neglected place but when I caught the bus the three miles out to the centre, it is huge, as I should have guessed. Before the pogrom in June 1941 and the subsequent killings and transportations, Iași had one of the biggest, oldest and most integrated Jewish communities in Europe. There were over 100 Jewish places of worship, and Jewish citizens were integral parts of the cultural, technical, mercantile and intellectual life of the city.

The cemetery is high on a hill and there was unseasonable snow on the April air when the old 'guardian' let me in. She had ten or so dogs who noisily did the actual guarding but understood that visitors were allowed. I paid the 5 lei admission and walked for about an hour up and down the rows, looking for the two family names I was seeking. Eventually I found a couple of ones that had the same name, but it was a common enough name so there's no need for them to be relatives.

There is of course a large memorial to the events of 1941 and we all have a duty to remember these facts, lest we take our eyes off the same things building up in our own time. But even more moving I found were the strange couple of hundred of identical gravestones near the entrance. When I noticed they were all from 1917 or 1918 it became clear that these were Jewish soldiers who has died for their country in the previous war. It was very moving.