
The ESJF (European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative) has published a new online book that aims to help prepare visits to Jewish cemeteries, mainly for groups but also for individual tourists. It is aimed at “tour operators, guides, activists, and anyone looking to engage with Jewish cemeteries in their towns, raise awareness, and attract funds for local heritage sites.”
Called Jewish Cemeteries and Tourism Development, it is published in the online ISSUU format. There also appear to be a limited number of the book in print version.
The book presents broad guidelines that provide background to the history of Jewish presence in Europe and also to customs and religious regulations regarding Jewish cemeteries. It’s aim is to offer “ideas for the inclusion of Jewish cemeteries in the existing infrastructure of local and regional offerings, thematic routes, tourism-related publications, to help you get started in working with them.”

As such, it provides suggestions as to what guides should learn about before taking visitors to a cemetery, and what they might want to talk about once there with visitors.
It also addresses people who might want to preserve or restore a Jewish cemetery and/or develop a Jewish cemetery into a recognized heritage site or tourist attraction.
There are brief chapters titled:
Jewish Cemeteries as heritage sites; Heritage Beyond Monuments; Going through the Jewish Cemetery: Overview; Demolished Jewish Cemetery; The preserved Jewish Cemetery; What can we talk about in a Jewish Cemetery; What to keep in mind with Jewish tourists; Visiting a Jewish Cemetery: Rules and Customs; Turning your local cemetery into a sustainable tourism site.
With its broad focus, the book makes some important points, including about cemetery preservation and the importance of involving local people, as well as how to prepare a visit.. But it tends to avoid specific tips on some practical issues, such as how to finance and organize clean-ups and signage; gaining access to cemeteries, and working with Jewish communities or other owners.
It concludes:
The material is drawn from the ESJF’s work fencing and surveying Jewish cemeteries in five countries: Ukraine, Moldova, Slovakia, Greece, and Lithuania and is somewhat limited because of that.
It might have been useful, for example, to cite successful examples in other countries of Jewish cemeteries where visitors are welcome, and where tourism is managed, or at least which are frequently visited by groups and guides who specialize in leading visitors and telling their stories.

Some of these cemeteries have published guidebooks or smartphone apps, and some have web sites — all of which can serve as models. Some, even some remote cemeteries, have signage. Some of these cemeteries have visitor centers and program regular guided tours. Some, such as the Brodno cemetery in Warsaw and the Währing cemetery in Vienna, have visitor centers with exhibits about the history of the cemetery and of funerary practices. The still-active Willesden Jewish cemetery in London has an especially rich program of guided tours, visitor center, web site, and other resources.
We have posted about these and other cemeteries, as well as cemetery tourism, on this web site, and JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber included case studies of some of these cemeteries in an earlier ESJF online book, Jewish Cemeteries and Sustainable Protection: The ESJF Handbook of Sustainable Heritage Tourism, which she co-authored and which the new book does link to.
Regarding resources, another web site that has much material that can be used to explore Jewish cemeteries in western Ukraine is Jewish Galicia & Bukovina, which has documentation and photographs from a number of Jewish cemeteries, plus information on the towns and on people who lived there.