In the past, when the cemetery ran out of space and there was nowhere to expand, a new cemetery was created by putting earth on the old graves. This is exactly what happened all the time in the old Jewish cemetery in the Jewish quarter of Prague. Not once, not two, but all twenty!
Let's see how it looks now …
This cemetery is one of the oldest surviving Jewish burial sites in the world. It was founded at the beginning of the 15th century; the oldest grave dates back to 1439. The last burial was made in 1787. About 350 years passed between these two burials, and more than 100 thousand people were buried in the cemetery - on top of each other, and so twenty layers.
In those days, Jews in Prague were allowed to be interred only in the Jewish quarter of Josefov. The cemetery was expanded several times, but there was still not enough space. The Jewish faith forbids moving gravestones, and layers of earth were applied to existing graves, and old gravestones were dug up and placed on a new layer of soil. Today there are about 12 thousand graves there.
Here's a story about this cemetery:
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Since ancient times, Jews have called their cemetery a garden - and it really is a garden, albeit sad and dreary. Branches of old trees and thickets of lilac bushes shade the graves overgrown with grass, and countless tombstones made of Sliven marble and sandstone. They are hewn in the form of a canopy, gradually sinking into the ground, a tombstone next to a tombstone, monuments with numerous words and monuments without inscriptions, a labyrinth of destinies from which only stones remain. They lurched from old age, wind and rain have already erased most of the names, and with them memories, but you can still read on old graves, as if in a book whose author has long been forgotten.
The cemetery was founded in the 13th or 14th century. The Jews brought here the bones of their fellow believers from the Uyezd, as well as from a large burial place, which was located between the present Bedroom and Jungmann's streets. The stones from this garden of the dead were built into the cemetery fence, and the legend says that these were the gravestones of suicides or people who cursed their parents for giving them life.
Other legends remind that at this place the burial was already under Prince Borzhivo, long before the foundation of Prague, even before Princess Libuše came to Vysehrad. On one of the tombstones there is the date 606, on the others - 941, 979, and under one stone, they say, is buried a woman who died a hundred years before the foundation of the Old Place. But wise people remember that one number was missing from the Jewish dates - the inhabitants of the ghetto did not mark the stones with real dates for fear that the graves would not be devastated by the troops of the crusaders or during pogroms.
So, probably the oldest tombstone is the monument to Abigdor Kara from April 1439, a famous poet who wrote a psalm about murder and robbery in the ghetto in 1389: “And the graves were dug, and the bones of long-decayed ancestors from their eternal resting places were torn out, the stones were destroyed, and the graves were razed to the ground …”.
No one will find out where exactly in this large sad garden the first dead was buried. On the tombstone of Joseph, the son of Gaon Yitzchak, it is written that he was well versed in Scripture, Mishnah, Talmud and in all books, that he could list all the instructions in Turim, was an expert in grammar and poetry, and there was no equal to him in this country, not abroad.
And here lies David, the son of Moyzhish Koref, a butcher, about whom it is written that he supported the Prague orphans, regardless of their faith, and on holidays distributed to the poor as much meat as his children weighed together. A little further lies Mrs Handela, the mother of the poor in Prague, who generously supported scientists and invited beggars to her table, distributed linen, clothes and shoes, and took care of orphans.
From others, only names remained:
Joshua, son of Yehuda, reader, buried in 941, Shendl, wife of the scientist Gabriol, died in 979, Abraham, son of Jacob, martyr
Gedalya, physician and manager of the old synagogue
There are Jewish, German names, not counting Czech ones from the 16th century: Krasa, Cerny, Sharka, Lyudmila, Slava, Dobrushka, Slavka, Krshesomysl, Itka and Bozena, Nezamysl, Mnata, Voen and Libuše.
In old books it is written that the wise Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac, whose name was RASHI, lived in France. He traveled a lot, was in Italy, Greece, Palestine, Egypt, Persia, until his fate brought him to Prague. Tradition tells that he was wise and educated, but it was because of his wisdom that he had many enemies: some called his piety hypocrisy, his science heresy. He was denigrated before those in power - they claimed that he was posing as a savior, that this false messiah wanted to lead the Jewish people out of Prague.
The hatred ultimately bore its black fruits - one evening, when the rabbi was sitting in his room over old books, a hired killer entered him and pierced his heart with a dagger. But the wife of the rabbi dripped a few drops of a miraculous balm onto her husband's wound, the wound healed and life returned to RASHI. To avoid further attacks, the rabbi buried an empty coffin under a tombstone with his name on it, and left in secret. His opponents several times removed the name of their enemy from the gravestone, declared a curse on his writings, but people continued to read them, and the name RASHI appeared on the stone again every morning. Only years later, when the rabbi actually died, his body was buried in the grave intended for him.
Many stories are told about the tombstone of Rabbi Lev. Their son was supposed to be buried next to the parents, but he died in Kolin, where he was buried. Later, his grandson claimed the place of honor next to the rabbi. The common believers, however, doubted and called the dead Rabbi Lev to give a sign if he wanted it. Then the grave expanded, and after the funeral it returned to its previous size. Another legend tells that, on the contrary, the grave was narrowed so that there was enough space between the grave of the rabbi and the neighboring one for the next deceased. The new grave was small because a child rested in it.
On the gravestone near the grave of Rabbi Lev is the coat of arms of the nobility, under which lies Handel, the wife of Bashevich, the first Prague Jew to receive a noble title. He had the right to mint coins, he served Albrecht from Wallenstein. At the end of his life he had to flee from Prague to Mlada Boleslav, where he soon died, and his wife Handel was left alone in the grave. This old story is also told differently. It is said that the Polish queen lies under the magnificent Handel tombstone. The king drove her out, and the queen, out of fear for her life, fled Poland.
She made it to Prague and took refuge in the Jewish city, assuming that no one would look for her there. The inhabitants of the streets around the Old-New Synagogue accepted her not only because she was defenseless and doomed to wander on roads and impassable roads, but also for a more practical reason - the queen had the right to mint coins. She lived in the ghetto, they say, happily and calmly. Those who knew her put a marble tombstone for her over the place of eternal rest, on which a lion in its claws holds a coat of arms with three fields: an average of three stars, and in the side there is an image of a lion. Only instead of her name, the inhabitants of the ghetto hewn out something different, because they feared that their queen's compatriots would not dug up the body and return it to Poland sometime in the future.