About the cemetery

The Jewish cemetery in Hlukhiv is included in the protection zone of the National Reserve "Hlukhiv". However, the record of historical tombstones, which could be recognized as objects of cultural heritage, is kept exclusively within the framework of our project.

The cemetery occupies 2.5 hectares. The topography of the area is flat with three distinct depressions on the eastern side of the cemetery. The eastern part of the cemetery is a meadow, the western part is partially covered with trees and bushes. The concentration of monuments in the western, flatter part of the cemetery significantly exceeds the concentration of tombstones in the eastern part of the cemetery. Most of the southern edge of the cemetery is set aside for modern burials.

The entire cemetery is fenced: the entrance to the cemetery has an iron gate; from the east, the cemetery has a reinforced concrete fence more than 1 meter high, along which trees are planted. From the south, the cemetery has a barbed wire fence, which turns into a metal fence more than 1 meter high, which continues to the entire western side of the cemetery. On the north side, the cemetery is separated from the homestead by a fence bordering it. In addition, along most of the western fence of the cemetery (starting from the southern edge), on the inner side, there is an earthen embankment and a drainage ditch, arranged in Soviet times, as a result of which a number of burials were damaged. The whole fence belongs to the second half of the 20th century and has no historical or artistic value.

The database of our website contains information about 1,040 gravestones, in varying degrees of preservation. Among them, 282 objects are foundations or fragments of monuments that existed before, 758 monuments survived or have minor damage. 357 tombstones have inscriptions in Russian or simultaneously in Russian and Hebrew, the rest 401 tombstones have inscriptions exclusively in Hebrew.

Rows of burials in the cemetery are oriented from north to south. The territory is not determined by any organizational plan, it is not divided into plots limited by alleys or paths. However, it is possible to conditionally identify four sites where the burials belong to the years 1921 - 2018. There are 320 monuments in these areas. Other tombstones of the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery belong to historical burials and date from the beginning of the 19th century to 1921. The earliest found tombstones are dated 1824 and 1826.

The location of tombstones from the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century indicates the existence of separate women's and men's plots at the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, as well as separate plots for burials of kohens, unmarried young men and women.

The main type of Jewish tombstones is stele. It prevails over other types of tombstones at the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery. The classic generally accepted stele is a vertical slab of local sandstone or limestone with a circular rounded top. Such steles make up the absolute majority of all tombstones in the cemetery.

Usually, the steles of Jewish tombstones were placed facing east, but this tradition was not always followed at the Hlukhiv cemetery. Many steles face west. In most cases, epitaphs and relief ornaments are made only on the front side of the tombstones. The face surface of the stones is not always aligned, in many cases the carving is done directly on the irregularities of the chipped surface.

Among the monuments of other types, the most common is a low obelisk column. It has epitaphs written on all four sides, or epitaphs on one side, and a traditional ornament in the form of a tree in a flower pot on the other sides. 58 monuments of this type were found at the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery. In most cases, they are made of the same sandstone or limestone.

At the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, 13 higher, pointed obelisks made of sandstone or granite have been preserved.

The traditional form of Jewish tombstones for many regions – the sarcophagus – at the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery is found only in burials of the 1920s - 1960s. There are 6 of them in total. They are made of concrete and have a rounded top. The poor level of preservation of this type of tombstones makes it difficult to decipher the inscriptions on them.

The cemetery features a single tombstone combining a sarcophagus with a stele attached to its end facing outwards. A tombstone of this type is called a "boot". It is most widespread in the Jewish cemeteries of south-eastern Volhynia.

There are also 7 tombstones in the form of a cubic plinth with a high pointed top at the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery. In most cases, such monuments are made of black polished granite and have inscriptions on one or more sides in Russian, Hebrew or two languages at the same time. In some examples of tombstones, only a cubic plinth has been preserved, in the upper part of which there is a pin for fastening the upper part. Monuments of this type were common in the Christian cemeteries of Hlukhiv.

Expensive, luxurious and fashionable tombstones, the shapes of which were borrowed from Christian cemeteries, were often found in Jewish cemeteries of European cities, Kyiv, Moscow and St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 20th century, but were never characteristic of old Jewish cemeteries in the towns of the Pale of Settlement. However, two similar tombstones were found at the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery: a tombstone in the form of a Weeping Tree, which became widespread in Christian cemeteries, and a marble monument with elements of a tombstone-chapel.

Also, in the only instance at the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, a tombstone in the form of a crypt made of brick is presented (installed on the grave of the Pruzhansky brothers, who died in the Jewish pogrom in November 1919), and a tombstone made of a millstone (similar ones are found in the Jewish cemetery in the city of Mglin, Chernihiv province, now Bryansk region, Russia).

Even under the circumstances of a traditional Jewish community, the monument, its type, the material it is made of, the plot of the carving and its complexity testified to the social category of the buried person. New-fashioned European monuments, as well as tall granite monuments, testified that the buried belonged to the rich Jews, most often with secular education and those who had departed from the traditional Jewish life. Traditional steles were erected on the graves of wealthy Jews who held conservative views. However, they surpassed the surrounding steles in terms of their size, a large amount of decoration, and the degree of its complexity and detailed processing. Epitaph inscriptions on such tombstones were made convex. Such steles testified to the wealth and noble origin of the buried person. Such steles make up only a small part of all traditional tombstones in the cemetery. They are represented by 56 gravestones at the Hlukhiv cemetery.

Due to the Jewish religion and traditions, the necessity of mandatory installation of a monument at each burial prompted the production of gravestones as inexpensive as possible at an affordable cost. This affected the character of the images, sometimes forcing the master to achieve expressiveness by the most economical means, and sometimes to leave the stele without carved ornaments at all. The decor of most of the traditional tombstones of the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery is very modest. As a rule, the carved ornament on them is completely absent, and the text of the epitaph is made in a "concave" way or by scratching the inscription on the stone.

In Jewish necropolistics, there are known cases when epitaphs were unprofessionally applied by the children of the deceased. This was done due to the lack of money for this in the family or because of the will of the father, who saw in this a sign of eternal connection with descendants. Thus, the artistic value of the inscriptions in most tombstones of the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery is completely absent and has a purely folk-craft character.

The above-mentioned requirement for the mandatory installation of a monument at each burial in the Jewish cemetery and the rows of graves that are clearly visible on the aerial photography of the Hlukhiv Jewish necropolis (during the field survey, the mounds of graves that form those rows are practically unreadable and are not always revealed), testify to the huge number of the monuments of the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery that were irretrievably lost.

It is also necessary to note the presence of painted tombstones at the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, which is rare and not found in all ancient Jewish cemeteries. Tombstone makers resorted to painting images in cases when the hardness of the stone did not allow to achieve the desired ornament, as well as the brightness of such tombstones could appeal to the customers, sharply highlighting such a colored tombstone against the background of grey homogeneous slabs in the neighbourhood. They often resorted to painting in order to renew the monument. Dyes could be red-brown and light-yellow soil, lime, soot and blue, mixed in an egg emulsion. However, such a dye did not perform its function for long - later the paint was washed away by rains, weathered and faded in the sun. At the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery, only 1 monument was revealed, the burial under which belongs to 1922, in the design of which dye was used. However, in the course of field work, several more tombstone foundations were discovered under the earth layer, in the recesses of the carvings, traces of painting were preserved, which disappeared on the entire other surface of the stone under the influence of natural factors.