History

According to F. Umanets, the first Jewish cemetery in Hlukhiv region was located near the village of Ulanove. By 1879, this cemetery was surrounded by the village from all sides. The trench enclosing the cemetery was overgrown and smoothed over, there were no monuments, the unevenness of the soil, which testified to the presence of graves on them, was found on an area of 1.5 acres. According to the description of Umanets, the cemetery was once covered with a forest of ancient linden trees. Later, instead of them, young lindens were planted, which by 1879 had also become suitable for construction. By that time, the cemetery had become part of the estate of the state peasant Sychov, and the Jews of Hluhiv allegedly paid him a certain amount so that he would not destroy the cemetery. It is not known when this cemetery was founded, but since the cemetery occupied quite a large space, it can be assumed that there was a very long period during which Jews buried their dead in Ulanove. In the same source, F. Umanets indicated that by 1879, 70 years had passed since Jews stopped burying in the Ulanove cemetery and built a new one near Hlukhiv. Thus, the Jewish cemetery in Hlukhiv should have been founded around the 1800s and 1810s.

This chronological period seems quite logical as the time of the establishment of the Jewish cemetery in Hlukhiv. Jews received the right to settle in this area in 1794. By 1800, 172 male and 170 female Jewish citizens lived in Hlukhiv. At the same time, according to the census, there were 10 male and 11 female Jewish townspeople in Hlukhiv County. In the following years, the Jewish community of Hlukhiv continued to grow and develop. In connection with the increase in the number of the community, the mortality of children and the sick, as well as the aging of its members, who were the first to settle in these territories, by the 1800s - 1810s, the question of allocating a plot for a Jewish cemetery became inevitably relevant. The only archival document that to a certain extent confirms these chronological boundaries is the "Journal of the meetings of the Hlukhiv town magistrate on the analysis of complaints for the year 1836". The source presents interesting circumstances under which the city's Jewish community received land for burying its dead.

According to one of the versions, the land occupied by the Jewish cemetery previously belonged to Protopope Cornelius Yuzefovych. According to his spiritual testament, in 1795 the land passed to the church of Anastasia in Hlukhiv, and later, the rector of this church, archpriest Ivan Kazanskyi, leased it to the Jewish community for the burial of the dead. The terms of that lease changed over time. According to some sources, the church in 1809 received a one-time payment for the opportunity to use this land for a Jewish cemetery, and according to other sources, the Jewish community had to pay annually for the occupied land.

According to the second version, the site of the Jewish cemetery once housed the "old Yarmarkovyshche" (old fair), which belonged to the town, and in the beginning of the 19th century, by order of the Little Russia Governor-General, this land was given to the Jewish people for "burying dead bodies".

Regardless of the circumstances, the Jewish community received a plot of land for the establishment of a Jewish cemetery. At the beginning of the 19th century, this plot of land was located 1 verst to the southern outskirts of the town. But by the beginning of the 20th century, the town grew and the Jewish cemetery began to enter the town limits, being located on the outskirts of the town between Tereshchenska and Putyvlska streets.

Another, slightly later, archival confirmation of the existence of a Jewish cemetery in Hlukhiv and burials there can be considered the metric book for the year 1845 - the only preserved book of the rabbinate in the town of Glukhov. 21 Jews who died this year were buried in the Jewish cemetery. The number of dead for this year is distributed by gender and age as follows: 13 men, 8 women, including 9 children, 6 adults and 6 elderlies. According to statistical data of 1858, the number of Jews who died in Hlukhiv was 42, of which 21 were men and 21 were women. Thus, for 100 years of existence (1810s - 1920s), according to the most modest calculations, the number of people buried in the Jewish cemetery of the town of Hlukhiv should be no less than 3-3.5 thousand people.

The burial and maintenance of order at the cemetery were managed by the funeral brotherhood - Hevra Kaddisha. In Hlukhiv, its members were elected by the community, and they managed the cemetery. The cemetery itself was not traditionally divided into categories that reflected the class and property stratification of society, but there were more or less "honourable" places. For example, in 1887, elected officials asked for 250 rubles for burial in an "honourable" place, 150 rubles could be paid for a less dignified place, poor Jews were buried for free. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a mikvah for washing bodies at the cemetery.

At the end of the 19th century, there were 30 Jewish cemeteries in the territory of the Chernihiv province: in Hlukhiv, Borzna, Ichna, Konotop, the village of Dmytrivtsi, settlement Ripki, settlement Loviny, Krolevets, Korop, Starodub, Pogar, Novgorod-Siversk, Hremyach, Mglin, Pochep, Kozelets, Novye Basany, Novy Byhov, Sosnytsia, Mena, colony Brech, Surazh, settlement Klintsi, Oster, Brovary, Novozybkov, settlement Semenivka and the village Novy Ropsk. In Hlukhiv there was a single Jewish cemetery for the entire Hlukhiv district. Jews who lived in the villages of Hlukhiv district buried the bodies of their dead in the cemeteries closest to them - in Hlukhiv, Novgorod-Siversk, and Krolevets.

During the pogroms of 1918-1919, a mass grave of Jews who died in this bloody massacre appeared at the Jewish cemetery in Hlukhiv. This mass grave is located in the western part of the cemetery and is a grave covered with a concrete slab with a massive tombstone of a traditional shape. In 2020, it was renovated and covered with an iron gazebo, and a new memorial sign was installed next to it. The cemetery also has individual burials of Jews killed in the pogroms of 1918-1919. They are located in the women's and men's parts of the cemetery and have tombstones of varying degrees of preservation. The names of the Jews killed in these pogroms are marked on a symbolic monument installed in June 2019 near the entrance to the cemetery (installed on a free place without reference to existing burials and mass graves).

After the pogroms and events of 1918-1919, the number of Jews in Hlukhiv decreased. Before the beginning of the First World War, the Jewish community consisted of almost 6,000 people. By 1926, the number of Jews in Hlukhiv fell to the number of 70 years ago and amounted to 2,566 people. During the Second World War and especially after its end, the number of Jews in Hlukhiv decreased even more.

Despite the fact that the Hlukhiv Jewish cemetery remained active all the time, during the years of Soviet power, when old Jewish monuments had cultural value, most of the ancient gravestones were deliberately broken and used by local residents as building material. The surviving ancient tombstones are about 1/3 of the original number of tombstones.