Zeimelis Jewish Cemetery, The
INTRODUCTION:
From August 14th through August 18th, 1999, my guide Regina Kopilevich from Vilnius, her helper, and I, spent four days in Zeimelis. We spent most of the time documenting all the tombstones in the Jewish cemetery. Regina is very good at reading Hebrew inscriptions on tombstones. We examined all the tombstones that we could. We tried to read every single tombstone. Altogether we looked at 249 tombstones, out of which 121 stones were unreadable, either because the inscriptions were too faint or nonexistent, due to extreme weathering, or because the quality of the original stone was poor. We found 34 tombstones that had last names as well as first names. The other 94 tombstones that Regina could read only had first names. We used shaving cream and charcoal to enhance the letters on some of the stones, so that Regina could read the inscriptions better. Regina also read some of the letters, by feel, with her fingers, like someone reading Braille. I took photographs of most of the tombstones that Regina could read. The tombstones that I took photos of are indicated in the rightmost column of Index 1 and Index 2, above.
Stones that were upside down, we turned right side up, so we could see the inscriptions. For those stones that were mostly submerged and buried below the ground, we removed enough of the earth around the stone, so that we could see the entire inscription.
All the tombstones were roughly in about 36 rows, which we numbered A through Z, then AA through AJ. The tombstones are all facing in the same direction, approximately North. The rows in the cemetery we defined as going from West to East.
Example: A1 means grave number 1 in row A. Grave A2 is east of grave A1. (Grave No means tombstone number within that particular row, going from West to East.)
Barry Mann
(Please e-mail all corrections to me, at fabrics@whc.net This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Barry Mann, fabrics@whc.net This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , was born in Johannesburg, South Africa.He graduated with a degree in Chemistry and Mathematics from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. In 1968 he lived and worked in Israel (Kibbutz Maagan Michael). When he was 26 years old he immigrated to the U.S.A. and he has lived in El Paso, Texas, for the past 30 years.
However, he is very much a "resident" of his ancestral shtetl of Zeimelis, having visited Zeimelis three times. Barry first became interested in the Manns of Zeimelis -- and the entire town of Zeimelis -- in 1997 when he became very interested in genealogy, and discovered a cousin, living in Kaunas, who had survived the war.
To learn more about Zeimelis, please visit the Zeimelis home page Barry created which is at
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Zeimelis/Zeimelis.htm
Copyright © Barry Mann 2001 - 2009