בראד

בראָד — ציון רבי שלמה קלוגר, המהרש"ק

Brody — Kever of Reb Shlomo Kluger, the Maharshak

New Jewish cemetery, Pidlisna Street 3, Brody, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine

• We could not confirm from any source that Reb Shlomo's own matzevah is standing, legible and identified today — only that he died in Brody in 1869 and was buried there. Go with someone who can find the stone, and do not promise a group a marked kever in advance.
• Go to the NEW Jewish cemetery, not the old one. The old cemetery was closed in the 1830s by Austrian decree and has since been demolished and built over, with no tombstones left. He died in 1869, so the new ground is where he would have been buried — but understand that this is an inference from the dates, not a sourced record of where his grave is.
• The new cemetery is fenced and is one of the best-preserved 19th-century Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine, with several thousand carved gravestones and an ohel at the entrance — but it is large, the inscriptions are worn, and sections are overgrown.
• Arrange with the Brody municipal museum or the Lviv Jewish community to have someone walk you to the grave, and confirm the exact spot on the ground before you bring a group.
• THE GROUND IS SETTLED EVEN THOUGH THE GRAVE IS NOT. The map point on this listing is the new cemetery at Pidlisna Street 3, measured on the ground by the ESJF survey. The old cemetery, 2.2 kilometres south, was closed in the 1830s and the oldest stone standing in the new one is from 1833 — a man who was niftar in 1869 is in the new ground. What no source will say is where in it.
• IT IS THE LARGEST JEWISH CEMETERY IN GALICIA — around five thousand matzevos, metal fence and gate both in good order, and known for its stone carving and for the poetry cut into its epitaphs. Do not treat it as a quick stop.
• THERE IS A MASS GRAVE ON THE GROUND of about six thousand people shot here in the Holocaust, and a monument to them on the outskirts of the cemetery. Behave in it accordingly.