Czech Republic series: "Sleeping in Dust"

Sleeping in Dust –

Monday, September 14 was rainy at first, then cloudy the rest of the day. Walter’s nephew Risha had a full day of Jewish history for us to witness. Folks like us can purchase a single ticket for entrance into about 7 different sites.

We began, however, at the main Wenceslas Square. John Hus’ statue dominates the plaza. One of the famous clocks – part of an old church – commands the tourists’ attention at the top of the hour.          

From the two small windows at the top of the top time-measurement circle, a succession of church history personages – puppets on a conveyer of some sort – appeared for about 50 seconds. 

They we went to the historic Jewish area. Each place had strict signs and attendants to enforce their message: no video. The Meisel Synagogue, the utterly fascinating Jewish cemetery, the building housing the cemetery accoutrements required for burial, the Old-New Synagogue (oldest in Europe), a museum chronicling the life-cycle and the holy days (Sabbath to Rosh-Hashanah), the Holocaust Memorial (a building in the form of a synagogue, with all the names of the Czechs, by region, killed in the Holocaust. Lots of people tearing up here. Then, at last, the thrillingly beautiful Spanish Synagogue, with tiles and art work in the Moorish fashion.

It was the cemetery that most fascinated me. Thousands of grave markers, not a single one straight up and down, and always cheek-by-jowl next to each other, posed the question to the unsuspecting visitor: “How do so many people get buried in such a situation? I mean, there are sometimes ten stones marking graves where in the USA there would be one.”

Walter explained it thus: in each era a person would be buried and a marker erected. In the next era, when the cemetery would seem “full”, either there was more soil and more was brought in, to make a second layer. The stone markers from the first were raised to the new ground level. And so on … 7 times. Perhaps 60,000 persons were buried thus, sleeping in dust, awaiting their resurrection. To tamper with any of the burial rituals might mean their chances on the Day of Resurrection might be diminished.

Lunch at The Colonial Café, where we met Bob Deutsch and his brother Morris. Bob lives in Asheville and Morris in Washington. Both are attorneys.

Then we circled back to the Wenceslas Square and some of the constricted side streets, to the John Hus Church, and back home to a meal at our hotel.

Walter, his nephew and wife, and I sat together for 2.5 hours, exchanging stories, and then I was happy to go horizontal.