In the beginning of this year, I (Meret from Germany) went on a trip to visit a dear friend of mine who is doing a voluntary service in Romania, Bukarest.
Staying true to my work, my friend and I went to visit a big Jewish cemetery right across a christian orthodox cemetery. Accompanied by two dogs from the supervisors, we took a walk across the cemetery covered in snow.
What I found very interesting was that there was no tombstone that was solely written on in Hebrew, if there was Hebrew it was always (partly) translated to Romanian. The tombstones were most of the time simple and didn’t have decorations, a few had a picture of the deceased.
Timewise are the tombstones from the 19th century up to today. Next to individual burials there were as well some monuments commemorating groups and certain events that took the life of many, e.g. fallen soldiers during the two world wars, Holocaust victims and victims of a big earthquake in 1977.
Unfortunately we couldn’t visit the big synagogue, because the guide was sick, but my friend sent me the picture from inside when she visited and said that it was modeled after a Synagogue in Vienna.
We also visited some orthodox churches and a big orthodox cemetery, which was my first time being in contact with an orthodox church.
Next to all these religious places we also went through the old time, visited the Romanian atheneum and took a look at some remains of the socialist dictatorship including normal buildings and of course the immense palace Ceaușescu.
Overall the trip was really cool and it was so nice to spend some time with my friend and I could even enjoy the travel there as I found it quite fascinating to look at small villages in the countryside that the bus was driving through.
Galicia Jewish Museum Interns Blog 