Obj. ID: 40090
Jewish Funerary Art Jewish cemetery in Pleven, Bulgaria
The report "Jewish Historic Monuments and Sites in Bulgaria" published by The United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad in 2011 states the following:
The condition of the cemetery at the time of the survey was appalling. The pre-burial house was burned down and plundered – only the foundation remained. The guard cabin was destroyed and there was no security. There was no institution caring for the cemetery, which was not marked on the local map. A path which links the residential district Druzhba with the road leading to the village Radishevo crosses the cemetery and is used as a shortcut to the center of the town. Many of the gravestones were damaged, overturned, or buried in overgrowth. The worst threat to the Jewish cemetery was the municipality possibly appropriating half of the plot for other uses. A new plan for the division of the land, on which the present Jewish cemetery is marked, shows the area of existing burials, with the remaining part marked as a reserve area of the municipality. In practice, this gives the municipality the right to seize the land and use or sell it. Because Pleven’s archives have been destroyed, there is no inventory to refer to and the exact boundaries of the cemetery are unknown. A cemetery plot with an area of 11,000 square meters is mentioned in a document dating from 1942, which contains an inventory of the Jewish property in accordance with the Law for Protection of the State. This supports the community’s right to the land, but the local Jewish community hasn’t been able to prove its property rights because its archives have also been lost. Sections of this part of the cemetery have already been appropriated by the municipality for a new block of flats, and also for construction of an electric power supply substation, over the protests of the Jewish organizations. The present size of the cemetery is nine hectares and it contains about 250 gravestones. The stones are made of granite, marble and concrete and they are engraved in Bulgarian, Hebrew and Ladino. The oldest stone dates from 1890. No single gravestone has survived intact. The gravestones – made of valuable materials, such as black marble or granite – were stolen, displaced or broken into pieces. All lettering and inscriptions made of bronze were either stolen or knocked off. Some graves have been desecrated in the course of the last 15 years. Many of the inscriptions are lost forever and cannot be restored.
