אליטא

אליטא — בתי החיים

Alytus — the Jewish cemeteries

Old Jewish cemetery, Alytus I, on the right bank of the Nemunas beside the Orthodox cemetery, Alytus, Alytus County, Lithuania

• THE RIVER SPLITS THE TOWN AND IT SPLIT THE KEHILLA'S GROUND. The cemetery to go to is in Alytus I, on the right bank of the Nemunas, next to the Russian Orthodox cemetery. The Old Town on the left bank had its own burial ground, on Smėlio street, with a stream running between it and the houses.
• THE WALL IS THE ORIGINAL. An irregular stone wall, not rebuilt, goes round the ground, and the cemetery is on Lithuania's register of protected immovable heritage.
• Several hundred are buried here and most of them have no marker. Around two hundred stones and fragments survive, with up to fifty of them near the entrance. Sources give the oldest as 1755 or 1790 and do not agree; the last is 1937, and burials went on until 1941.
• EVERY READABLE STONE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED. A book documenting the ground came out online in 2020 — a map of the cemetery and photographs and translations of the ninety-nine stones whose epitaphs can still be read in whole or in part. It was made by the town's own gymnasium and its pupils together with the municipality, Maceva and the Alytus museum. Read it before travelling.
• SURVEYED COORDINATES. The map point on this listing is the cemetery itself, measured on the ground by the ESJF survey — not a town centre. Where a kever is inside an ohel it will still need finding once you are through the gate, but the gate is now something you can navigate to.