PRAGUE’S Jewish Cemetery.
The importance of any cemetery to the casual visitors depends
on who is buried there or why the site exists in historical terms. It may be
important to a viewer for family reasons, or some historical figure or figures,
or events that required the cemetery to be established in the first place. Military
cemeteries symbolise not only a nations’ loss of young lives often for futile
causes, but also a country’s remembrance of their fallen sons. Other cemeteries
such as Dutch ones only allows occupancy for set time periods of twenty to
thirty years before being dug up to make room for the next generation.
Tucked away in the heart of Prague’s Jewish quarter is a
cemetery of a more sinister nature, macabre in the sense that the quarter was
left intact during the Nazi occupation of Prague during the 2nd
World War, apparently because it was earmarked by Germany’s higher command as a
possible museum to the future extinct race of Jewish people when the National
Socialist Government completed their cleansing task. It had been my intention to
visit the current Jewish Museum and graveyard. However after wondering around
the narrow cobbled streets looking for the entrance and learning that the entry
fee was excessive at some $20 per person I decided against the idea. I must say
this is the first time I have ever been asked to pay to visit a cemetery. My reading
suggested that the graveyard was overly crowded with headstones, many cheek to
jowl were you would be hard pressed to find space to sit down. Headstone
leaning at all sorts of angles often touching one another, naturally this was
to be expected, after all this cemetery had been here for several hundreds of
years.
Outside Kafka Museum.
Comment on the state of the Republic. Citizens urinating themselves on the National map.
Prague, like many Eastern European cities had a large Jewish
population and as was the custom at the time they were required to live and be
buried in their own quarter. I am not sure whether Franz Kafka is buried there,
but he most certainly lived in the neighbourhood. Later in the afternoon I
visited Kafka’s own museum on the other side of the river, exhibits afforded there gave a good insight into the
lives of Prague’s Jewish population in the late 19th and early 20th
cent. It is common knowledge that Kafka view of Czech society was one of a
pointless bureaucratic nature that lead to his psychological and masochistic
nature much of which is expressed in his writing. Difficult relations with his father are outlined in ‘Letter to Father’ that also deals with
many of the problems encountered by Jews at that time. Their stained relations
with their German and Czech fallow citizens are well illustrated and examined in various exhibits.
Luck seemed to be with me for on my walk back to the city for I
decided to visit the Museum of Applied Arts, were much to my surprise I discovered
that some windows on the upper floor overlooked the Jewish Cemetery. My wife
informed me there was a very good view from the Ladies toilet window. This would have resulted
in a fairly unique photo of the graveyard unfortunately my camera was set unknowingly on video and only much later did I realise that the photographic effort had been in vain. Still you can appreciate the overcrowded congested
nature of the graves, headstones have taken up their own individual poses, some
at rakish angles other in quite sedate pose from a small sketch I made from memory.
Sketch of the Jewish Cemetery, Prague.
View from the Ladies Toilet, Museum of Applied Art.
No comments:
Post a Comment