Terry Thornton who writes the terrific Hill Country of Monroe County blog has started a new endeavor called The Association of Graveyard Rabbits. It's an association of genealogy bloggers who write specific blogs about cemeteries, grave markers, burial customs and more. I would love to join, but I just don't see having the time right now and my geographical region is not extremely exciting for me and my current research. I haven't even scraped the surface of our family history so this will have to wait for a later date.
Schelly Talalay Dardashti, who writes the excellent Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog, has started up a Jewish Graveyard Rabbit blog as part of the association. I sent her a link to the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the grave of my great-grandfather Moshe Zinberg. But looking through all the photos my mother brought on her last visit I found another interesting aspect of Jewish cemeteries.
In many cemeteries in Israel you will find memorial monuments to holocaust victims. The one above is for the victims from Grajewo, Szczuczyn, Rajgród and Radziłów in Poland. As you may recall my paternal grandfather was born in Radziłów. The inscription on the monument reads:
Grajewo
Szczuczyn
Rajgród
Radziłów
Saints of Grajewo, Szczuczyn and Rajgród perished in the village of Bogusze near Grajewo
Saints of Radziłów were burned alive in a barn
May the Lord revenge their blood (HY"D)
I put together a map of the area as well:
If you want to learn about honorifics for the dead in Judaism, you can find more on Wikipedia by clicking here.
To learn more about reading Hebrew gravestones, click here. This is a must-have document for anyone trying to understand a Jewish grave.
