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17 | Cemeteries, Holocaust Memorials, & Burial Societies
- Brandeis University Press
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chapteR s event een Cemeteries, Holocaust Memorials, & Burial Societies graveyards In the Soviet Union, as elsewhere, graveyards were an important part of the life of a congregation, and upon forming, every Jewish community allocated space for one. For the authorities’ part, they allocated parcels of land for graveyards to Jews, and the community usually covered the cost; sometimes the Jewish graveyards were adjacent to the Christian ones, but the two were always kept separate. The Jewish cemetery was usually fenced off and contained a structure called a “chamber” or “purification house,” where the corpse would be washed and dressed in shrouds. In prerevolutionary Russia, burial and cemeteries were under the purview of the congregation, within which the burial society (hevra kadisha) served as the responsible agency. Burial was considered among the most important mitzvot, one that the family of the deceased was obligated to perform rigorously. A person without relatives was considered a met mitzvah—that is, someone whose burial became the duty of the community. Most congregations made great efforts to bring each deceased Jew to a Jewish grave. The burial society, which supervised graveyard maintenance as well as burials, turned into the most important and influential charitable organization. Through this status, over time it acquired tasks not directly associated with burial. With the transformation of Russian Jewish society in the second half of the nineteenth century, the institution of the burial society drew increasing criticism, and its public and economic power waned. In particular, the maskilim (figures in the Jewish enlightenment movement ) leveled harsh critiques against these societies, some of them justified. Still, under the tsarist empire, burial and cemeteries remained affairs of the Jewish public and the regime did not really intercede.1 This situation changed once the Bolsheviks seized power. Under Bolshevik rule, all cemeteries were nationalized and the religious associations were completely separated from the functions of burial and graveyard maintenance, the latter being assigned to departments of the local 206 Between Private and Public Spheres authorities. Even so, in practice the burial societies continued to function through the 1920s, and were regarded as private enterprises providing services. New regulations were issued in the 1930s that outlawed the continued existence of the burial societies. Officially, this status did not change during the war or after it, either.2 But with the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, the municipal authorities found themselves increasingly stretched and preferred that the religious associations resume the task of operating the cemeteries. Yet in December 1946, when Rabbi Shlomo Shlifer sought permission from the SRA to have interment issues transferred to the congregation, the vice chairman replied that all burial affairs were the responsibility of the local authorities and the congregation should not play a part. Transport of the deceased, assignment of grave sites, and the like were the responsibility of the trust for the provision of burial services (Trest pokhoronnogo obsluzhivaniia), which operated at the behest of the local authorities.3 After the war the soviet for the Russian Orthodox Church and the SRA could not ignore the sorry state of the cemeteries, which elicited complaints and requests alike by the religious associations regarding burial and graveyard maintenance. Accordingly, on May 21, 1947, a discussion was held by representatives of the soviet of the Russian Orthodox Church and the SRA about the situation of cemeteries. In effect, this discussion was an indirect acknowledgment that the subjects of burial and cemeteries could not be completely divorced from their religious aspects. The legal entanglements and the many entities involved in burial and graveyard maintenance thus created facts that were rather different from those set forth in the Soviet laws and the regulations. In the 1920s, most Jewish cemeteries continued to be cared for by the burial societies and almost all Jewish deceased were buried in them. In the 1930s, however, land for new cemeteries ceased to be allotted based on religion but rather became “internationalized.” Many such graveyards had plots designated for the various religions, and family or friends who wanted their loved ones to be buried in a Jewish cemetery had them buried in these plots.4 Villages and midsize towns, meanwhile, continued to have cemeteries distinguished by religion, and almost all the Jewish dead were buried in Jewish ones, the funeral rites being either Jewish or Soviet, with Soviet burials including music and speeches containing Communist slogans. Thus, despite the absence of official burial societies, until the Holocaust most locations with a significant Jewish population, especially in the former...