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(1/9) So for #AncestryHour I want to take a moment to discuss something that happened to me last week when I was at a cemetery to take some photos for a client. I'm a Jewish specialist and I know not all of these terms will be familiar, so I'll clarify if needed (cont)
(2/9) So, most Jewish cemeteries are divided by burial society. There are landsmannschaften, which are based on where someone is from. Some are union-based, like Workman's Circle or they can be based on the life of the person. As I was walking away from (cont) #AncestryHour
(3/9) the area of the cemetery where I needed to take photos (had parked my car a way off), I noticed an obelisk. Out of curiosity, I went over to it, to see what section of the cemetery had gotten such a monument to mark it- usually it's just gates (cont) #AncestryHour
(4/9) As I got closer, I noticed a few things- First of all, the graves had far more information than I had ever seen on a grave. Family members' birth and death dates, towns of origin, even immigration dates. Really incredible amounts of information (cont) #AncestryHour
(5/9) I also noticed that the grave style was unusual for the people buried there- Ashkenazi graves tend to be the European style headstone with maybe a footstone, Sephardic graves tend to be flat on the ground. These graves had both to fit all of that info. (cont) #AncestryHour
(6/9) The other thing that struck me was exactly how many fresh graves there were of people who had died in the last 4 months. More than any other part of the cemetery, including the newer sections. And then I reached the obelisk. (cont) #AncestryHour
(7/9) This section was a Holocaust survivors section. The graves had so much information because they were the only markers those murdered family members would ever have. And all of the fresh graves hit me even harder in that moment. (cont) #AncestryHour
(8/9) Some of these graves had the numbers tattooed on the person in Auschwitz carved on the grave. Most listed murdered family. These people had all survived so, so much... and they most likely died of COVID. They survived genocide, and died of this disease #AncestryHour (cont)
(9/9) I'm not sure what the "point" of this post is, except to share the experience and to remind everyone that even though history is all around us, its witnesses are dying off. I'm including some photos of the obelisk below. This all hit me pretty hard #AncestryHour
