Restoration work involving 23 gravestones in the historic Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague was carried out this year by the Prague Jewish Museum, as part of its ongoing work in the cemetery.
The museum announced in a Facebook post that in addition to restoration work on the stones themselves, 20 gravestones were relocated from a corner of the cemetery where they had been incorrectly placed in the past.
A special crane was used to relocate nine of these to their original location in the cemetery; their original positions were determined by using historical sources, the museum said.
In addition, 11 gravestones were removed and taken across town to their original places in the old Jewish cemetery in Žižkov. It is assumed that these had been moved during the destruction of most of the Žižkov cemetery in the communist era,
The Žižkov cemetery was founded as a plague cemetery in the 17th century and used until 1890.
It was largely destroyed in early 1960s and then in the 1980s when the Czech TV tower was built there. A large part of the cemetery was dug up, tombstones were knocked down and broken and the rest of the cemetery was filled in and turned into a park. Only around one-fifth of the original cemetery still exists.
The Old Jewish cemetery was established in the early 15th century and functioned until 1787. Today it forms part of the Prague Jewish Museum. The restoration project was financed in cooperation with the Foundation for Holocaust Victims.
Read the Museum’s Facebook post announcement