I NEWS • i s t L'Shona Tova _ 0 , (-..., , J.,,:• sz • , 0 - -1 To All Our Customers and Friends , Wishing Everyone A Year Filled With The Greatest Of Health, Happiness and Prosperity, „ ' ' • 4 %:--- i , 1 pli 1 11 i ,,, Czech Cemeteries Are Falling Apart JOSEF KLANSKY Special to The Jewish News ii, 4, it Sizes 14 Plus Elaine, David, Toby, Sherry Sharon, Emily, Lisa, Dolores, Pat and Deborah Don't Forget Our Upcoming Trunk Show Friday and Saturday October 5 & 6 Featuring Ra U.S.A. Exclusively Sugar Tree Plaza • 6209 Orchard Lake Rd. N. of Maple • West Bloomfield 851-8001 To all of our friends and customers... our sincerest wishes for health and prosperity in the New Year from three generations of the Weintraub family • Saul & Sarah Weintraub • Doris Zak • Rochel Kittrell • Danny & Yetta Weintraub • Robert Bishop • Bruce & Shelly Hoffman 5 pm Sat, 10 am SUNSET STRIP" 9536 Northwestern Highway, South.helcf, MI 48034 HOURS: - F 10 arn 5-.30 pm, 357..4000 - PHONE: APPY NEW YEAR!! X ,Y4 , ,, Florist •wid • Wedding and Party Specialists • Daily Orders and Deliveries • Fresh, Silk and Dry 25846 W. Nine Mile Rd. 122 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1990 • Southfield, MI 48034 • 355-5565 T ouring his country during the pre- election campaign in May, Czechoslovak Presi- dent Vaclav Havel stopped at the ancient Jewish cemetery in Dobris and walked through a graveyard littered with the debris of desecrations and neglect. Angered by the sight of broken and overturned headstones, Mr. Havel scolded the local authorities in Dobris, about 25 miles from Prague, for disregar- ding the cultural heritage of former fellow-citizens and irreverence toward their memory. The state of the Dobris cemetery would doubtlessly surprise American visitors taking a guided tour of a different place, the magnificently preserved old Jewish cemetery in the center of Prague, one of the historic landmarks in the Czechoslovakian capital. Surrounded by busy streets, the cemetery, in what was for centuries the Prague ghetto, contains 13 layers of graves pressed one atop the other. Many visitors gaze in si- lence at the large stone- covered tomb of the famous Maharal of Prague — the Rabbi Yehuda Low ben Bezalel, who died in 1609 and who is said to have been on friendly terms with Emperor Rudolf II. Legend has it that the Maharal created an ar- tificial man —the Golem. At the newerJewish cemetery in Prague's Oleany District, tourists can see the graves of writer Franz Kafka and other famous Prague Jews who died before the Holocaust. But the well-cared-for Jew- ish cemeteries in the capital are unfortunately an excep- tion. Except in the few towns where small Jewish com- munities still exist, the con- dition of Jewish burial grounds outside of Prague is deplorable. Without a Jewish con- gregation or conscientious town counselors to care for them, hundreds of Jewish graveyards have been deserted and fallen into ruin, prey to vandals and thieves. Some were destroyed by the Nazis dur- ing the war, while others gave way to housing projects or were put to different uses= by the post-war Communist regime. Valuable marble tomb- stones stolen from abandon= ed cemeteries have turned up as stairs in newly-built private houses. When a new pavement was laid on Wenceslas Square in Prague a few years ago, some tiles brought to the construction site were marked with Heb- rew letters. That some deserted Jewish graveyards still exist is due only to their inaccessible locations. There still is a Jewish cemetery in the small town of Hroznetin near the Karlevy Vary (Carlsbad) spa, a region which was part of Sudetenland before World War II with a largely Ger- man population. The cemetery survived the Nazi era because it is hidden - Some of the oldest memorials and the more modest ones remain intact. deep in a forest where no cranes or trucks could reach it to uproot and cart away 200-year-old gravestones. Because there are no Jew- ish survivors in the area, a , visitor must ask the local Catholic priest to show the way to this forgotten burial place. In contrast, Jewish burial grounds are easily accessible, in Divisov in Central Bohemia and in Sabinov in Slovakia. But their walls have crumbled. Many gravestones are missing. Others are overturned and broken. But some of the oldest memorials and the more modest ones remain in- tact, though the inscriptions are hardly legible anymore. Occasional visitors to some abandoned cemeteries have a hard time getting inside. President Havel's angry reaction to the condition of the Jewish cemetery in Dobris may help save some of the deserted Jewish graveyards in Czechoslovakia. But without assistance from abroad, the surviving Jewish cemeteries of Czechoslovakia are doomed to disappear.