The Jewish Museum of Frankfurt, Germany is preparing an exhibition for 2024 on the subject of Death. As part of its preparations, curators want to know — Why do people visit Jewish cemeteries?
On-site interviews have been carried out with visitors to Jewish cemeteries in Frankfurt.
But in social media posts, the museum said it wanted to hear from a wider community.
It asks people to comment as to why they visit Jewish cemeteries? And what do they do there?
You can answer in a comment to the post or DM on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter.
Or you can send an email to [email protected]
We are also interested in this question. In a recent publication, JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber — who has been visiting Jewish cemeteries for more than 30 years — wrote about the role of Jewish cemeteries as tourist venues in an online book about sustainable heritage tourism. (Her discussion begins on page 65.)
Until fairly recently, she wrote
the vast majority of visitors to Jewish cemeteries were Jews – visiting family graves; paying homage at the tombs of noted rabbis; erecting Holocaust memorials and commemorating the Shoah. Increasingly, though, individuals, group tours, school and synagogues groups, official delegations, genealogists, and others have all joined in what Dr. Samuel D. Gruber termed a “new cultural pilgrimage” to Jewish heritage sites, including cemeteries.
And she quoted a passage from the Czech Jewish heritage cemetery web site for Project Keshet:
They are often hidden away from people, neglected, as if deserted… they have however never been deserted completely. Ask the local people where they learned to smoke and where they had their first romantic experiences, ask those who remember more and if you are lucky, something that Heavens love most will open – a story. Sometimes it is a story of those who rest there, sometimes a story of those who helped them or harmed them.