Visit to the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague

     As part of my learning service assignment on hope I visited the Old Jewish Cemetery while traveling in Prague. The cemetery was unlike any that I had seen before. It was filled with old jagged gravestone that were almost stacked on top of each other. The stones were worn leaving the inscriptions barely visible and some completely unreadable. The cemetery is enclosed by stone walls and not much bigger than a football field in total size. The isolation of the cemetery gave me an erie feeling.

     The guide told us a little bit about the history of the cemetery. The cemetery was used from the 15th to the 18th century to burry the Jewish people of Prague. This small area was the only place that Jewish people had to burry their dead. To make the most of the small cemetery without disturbing graves they added layers of soil and lifted the tombstones to the surface. 12,000 tombstones are visible and up to 100,000 people are estimated to have been buried there in 12 layers of graves.