An event Sunday will officially present results of a full documentation and digitization of the more than 1,000 headstones in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Eisenstadt, Austria, which was in use from around 1679 to 1875.
The Jewish Museum in Eisenstadt reports that its researchers succeeded in documenting 1,082 headstones (marking the graves of 1,105 people) in eight months of intensive work that created in a full digitization whose complexity is unique in Austria — and provides information about the people buried there as well as the cemetery and markers.
It includes photos, transcription of inscriptions, biographical notes of the people buried, and links to further information, such as relatives of the deceased. There is also a detailed map pinpointing the stones, with each accessible in printed materials or by QR codes affixed to each stone that can be accessed by smartphone.
As we reported earlier this year, according to the Museum’s web site the “uppermost priority” of the project, which was launched in January, is “to correctly decode and pinpoint all the individual graves of Eisenstadt’s Older Jewish Cemetery, to enable all visitors to become aware of and find a specific, desired gravesite.”
It cannot be emphasized often enough: the Hebrew headstone inscriptions are not an obsolete addendum to geneological research, in case they’re even able to fulfil such a role. They are primary sources for historians and genealogists. For Jewish specialists they are an inexhaustible cornucopia of riches which answer both obvious and arcane questions about the internal history of the Jewish communities. Above and beyond their historical value, moreover, the Hebrew inscriptions were composed with profound love and wisdom by human beings for their departed, they gave comfort and solace to the bereaved survivors. They possess timeless value and eternal validity. Reading the texts is a dignified memorial to the dead.
See our May 2015 post on the project
Click to read more about the cemetery and the project
Click to see growing digital database of the gravestones
2 comments on “Old Jewish Cemetery documentation in Eisenstadt, Austria complete”
Does anyone know the phone number or email address of a person that works in the cemetary so that I can speak with them?
no front page news,nevertheless a sign:האור ,amid despair day by day !
“Schreib Dich Nicht
zwischen die Welten ,
komm auf gegen
der Bedeutungen Vielfalt,
vertrau der Tränenspur
und lerne leben.”
Zeitraum >>Fadensonnen<<,Paul Celan