In Březnice, on November, 26th 1945

Julius Lederer in Březnice

Received 29. 10. 1945

Titl. Documentation Campaign Jewish Agency for Palestine Ezra Committee for the CSR in Prague

I have not been able to answer your letter from the 9th of this month bearing the sign ZS/Schi. until today because I have needed to make an inquiry so that I can provide you with the right information.

According to the urbarium of the domain of Březnice from 1577, Jews in Březnice had to pay various taxes. In the statement of the chairman of the society of natives and friends of the town of Březnice and the surroundings of Prague, secretary Ludvík Fürst, he says that he has found in the records of the town of Březnice entries from previous years that concerned a plot near Jewish graves. Mr. Fürst, who has been studying the history of Březnice very closely, takes this to mean that Jews have been living in Březnice since the year 1500 and have been burying their dead in the place where there is now a Jewish cemetery, although at the time the place was not marked as a cemetery.

The cemetery consists of two connected sections. The older section has about 270 gravestones, many of them with illegible markings, and the newer section has about 150 gravestones. In the older section, there is an area without any gravestones. Burials have not taken place there in a long time because nobody knows whether there was even a burial ground there in the past. Burials took place in the new section until the Jews were deported to Theresienstadt, i.e. until the year 1942.

In the winter of 1941, boys from the Hitlerjugend, housed in the local newly built elementary and middle school, partly demolished the cemetery wall and engaged in winter sports, such as skiing, sledding, etc. at the cemetery, and knocked over 19 gravestones, some in the old and some in the new section of the cemetery. In the spring of 1942, Hitlerjugend members broke into the cemetery by breaking the gate lock. Led and by their instructors and armed with rods and ropes, they rampaged around the cemetery like vandals. The result of their actions was as follows: in the old burial ground 8 gravestones were knocked over, 21 were violently run over and 1 was broken, in the newer section of the cemetery only a single headstone remains untouched, 152 haven been knocked down, 7 of which have also been broken. A terrible sight. When the news of the devastation of the cemetery spread, crowds of people went to the cemetery and loudly vented their outrage over the cruel actions of the Nazi youth. There is also

a chapel at the cemetery, which is in a pitiful state after the invasion of the German horde. The doors are broken, the bars in the windows have been ripped out, the pulpit is damaged, the prayer panels that hung on the walls were torn and their frames burned, Czech and Hebrew signs made out of metal letters were ripped from the wall, the stone decorations on the facade were taken down, the metal that covered the chapel was partly torn off. The damage that these Kulturträgers caused cannot be described, it must be seen to be believed!

The local religious community, once famous for its yeshiva, was the seat of the regional Rabbi of the Prácheňský region. It used to have many members, but only a small number when they were sent away on the transports. Twenty-nine people lived in Březnice and 13 in its surrounding area, i.e. a total of 42 people belonging to Březnice. Out of those, only two returned, my brother and I. We would like to return the cemetery to its former state, but we do not know whether this will be possible.

I hope that this report has satisfied your question and I remain yours faithfully,

Julius Lederer

The report was given in Březnice by Julius Lederer, Chairman of the Council of the Jewish Communities in Bohemia and Moravia-Selesia.

On behalf of the Documentation campaign:

Scheck

On behalf of the archive:

Tressler