The Chesed Shel Emeth cemetery in University City (a close suburb of St. Louis) was vandalized this weekend, with around 200 headstones knocked over.
This is where my paternal grandparents, uncle, great-grandparents, great-aunts, great-uncles, and a few cousins are buried.
The headstone shown in one of the videos in the linked article bears one of my family’s surnames although at this point we don’t know if it’s one of our relatives or someone with the same surname. It is not my grandmother’s grave, or my uncle’s, because I know what their headstones look like and it’s not theirs, but beyond that I can’t be sure.
People basically shitting on other people and their beliefs/customs/loved ones’ remains always bothers me, but this hit especially hard since so many of the family in the first generations past immigration to the US are buried there. These are my relatives, my people, my family.
I hate people who do shit like this. If I was closer I’d go out and help reset the stones. I’m really glad stuff like this is really rare, but it still pisses me off.
Glad to see that Gov. Greitens (who I didn’t vote for) visited the cemetery today. Even more pleased to see that Greitens apparently convinced Mike Pence to alter his previously scheduled trip to St. Louis and join him on the visit.
Broomstick, I’m so sorry for the personal hurt that this terrible crime has inflicted on you. How terrible to look at the pictures and see your own name on the headstones.
This is, of course, in addition to how this atrocity wounds the entire Jewish community, and the community of all civilized human beings.
Broomstick I am so sorry to learn your family is buried that the cemetery , I am Jewish too and take this very personal My parents are buried at a small Jewish cemetery b/c my mom wanted to be buried with her family . I hope the police will be able to find the people that committed this crime of hate !
The JCC here keeps getting threats. They never prove to be anything, but we had a presentation today about what we’d do if there were an active shooter in our preschool, which is in a synagogue.
The JCC is in the Reform shul. The preschool where I work is in a shul that is both Reconstructionist and Conservative affiliated, but a lot of people here don’t consider themselves affiliated with either; they just like the shul.
Anyway. We have two plans. If we have to evacuate for a general threat, we go to the JCC, which is about three blocks away. If it’s a Jewish threat, we go to a country club that has agreed to take us.
I’ve had to worry about stuff like this all my life, and the one time I actually got my life threatened for being Jewish, it was during the Clinton administration, and the worst anti-Semitism I’ve faced was in 1984, when the synagogue I attended was fire-bombed by teenaged skinheads, and in the late 1990s, in an incident that ended in a single death, not of any of the shooter’s stated targets, because they were all being protected by the FBI, so since he couldn’t get anywhere near the synagogue, he shot a person attending the Korean Methodist Church. But he had previously shot several people leaving services at an Orthodox shul in Chicago the day before.
I am really scared. My heart goes out to you, Broomstick. I have been to that cemetery, because I used to work with the Haredi community in University City when my husband was in Iraq, and spent almost every Shabbes there. I already made my donation. I hope you can find peace somehow.
People that are so cowardly they can only attack the dead are, well, no one word can describe them. Sick, idiotic, craven, they all apply.
Over forty years ago the cathedral church I attend now was burned by an arsonist. Only the stone walls were left standing. The arsonist was a mental patient, with no particular agenda that I ever heard about, but I can feel the pain, in some measure anyway.
In a case like the cemetery attack it’s not the dead that feel the pain, but the living.
It looks like none of the graves of my ancestors were damaged, although my great-grandparents are right next to the worst-affected section. Which is a relief of sorts. It not like my life needs more upset right now.
Me, too - the community served by the cemetery has a large percentage of families that came here fleeing persecution, this can’t help but dig up old fears and memories.
But bravo to those helping to deal with this vandalism.
<<The cemetery will soon send us the costs to repair all damage and estimated costs for a major security upgrade at their cemetery. We also just learned of another heavily damaged historic Jewish cemetery in Colorado that we can also help (costs may be between $50-100K).>>
I’m amazed at how people will stand up. When my synagogue was fire-bombed in 1984, we shared a parking lot with a Lutheran church, and they gave us space for services while we rebuilt, in addition to helping us with fundraisers.
But the bravest thing was when I was in a building and I got my life threatened by this guy who collected Nazi memorabilia, and brought a bunch of guns and knives with swastikas on them into the building, and my friend Rick, who was a Nazarene pastor, and I knew from my National Guard service, stood up to the guy and threw him out of the building, which was an annex of our Guard building, and Rick gave the guy an earful about bringing something like “enemy” weapons into an American base in the first place.
The guy was retired, so he sort of had the right to be there, but not as much as I did, however, when he was in, he had outranked me, so I was uncomfortable telling him off, aside from the fact that he had just threatened me with an anti-Semitic comment, and I was standing there like a deer in the headlights. But Rick outranked him. It was still brave of him the way he calmly confronted the guy and told him that no one spoke that way to a soldier, or to one of his friends, or for that matter, to another person of any kind.
RivkahChaya, you are right about how people will stand up.
About five or six years ago another church in our city, and Episcopal congregation, was destroyed by an arsonist. Several congregations offered to host them while rebuilding went on, but they ended up using the one synagogue in town. They didn’t have to alter worship hours, because the synagogude didn’t use their worship space on Sunday mornings!
