Phil Lilgeberg, who visits and documents historic cemeteries, believes that the vandalism at Newark’s Grove Street Cemetery is the worst case he has ever witnessed. Hundreds of headstones are toppled. Their ceramic portraits are smashed with hammers.
“It’s hard to say what would go through the mind of someone who would do this to a cemetery,” Lilgeberg said. “How could this ever be fixed?”
This old Jewish cemetery in the Vailsburg neighborhood is only supposed to be open one day a year during the high holidays. But an unlocked wrought-iron gate on the south end allowed Lilgeberg to enter and show the Four Oranges the destruction. It is one thing to hear about the desecration of a sacred place — another to witness it.
It is believed that among three Jewish burial grounds in Newark — Grove Street Cemetery, Talmud Torah Cemetery, and Union Field Cemetery — that 550 tombstones are toppled, according to the Jewish Federation of the Greater MetroWest. But the damage is so widespread it’s difficult to know if any new tombstones have been harmed more recently. Meanwhile, Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia, St, Louis, and another near Chicago continue to be the target of antisemitic acts.
“It’s a shande, as we say in Yiddish,” said Barbara Krasner, a writer whose great-grandparents are buried in the cemetery’s Ain Yankov section said. “A shame.”
In 2017, Krasner wrote “No Stone Unturned,” a paper that details the various efforts to solve the vandalism issue that has plagued the cemetery since the 1970s.
This 138-year-old cemetery is a trove of artifacts for historians, genealogists, artists, and families researching their roots. Sculptures, portraits, and poetic inscriptions create a snapshot of Jewish life in the Victorian era. Visitors can find headstones written in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English that memorialize people that left Poland, Russia, Austria, and Hungary to find a home in Newark.
Krasner believes Jewish cemeteries must be preserved because so much history has already been lost in war-torn countries abroad. “It’s not like in Poland where the Nazis tore up the Jewish gravestones to make roads,” she said. “And that makes it all the more a shande, because so much of our past lies here.”
In 2020, Jewish Federation of the Greater MetroWest awarded a grant to help restore the Grove Street Cemetery. But progress has been slow.
“The process of lifting a single grave takes approximately three men and must be done manually due to proximity of the neighboring stones,” said Lauren Leon, communications director at the Jewish Federation. “The project is also weather dependent, so they anticipate that it will take a few years to fully complete.”
The organization believes that there hasn’t been any “recent vandalism.” Sanford B. Epstein, the company that manages the cemetery, seconded that claim.
But Lilgeberg is skeptical. The last time he was at the cemetery, he found animal remains — dog skulls to be precise — scattered among the plots. Lilgeberg, a so-called taphophile who has visited hundreds of historic cemeteries, has seen these remnants before and believes that the bones are used for occult rituals like Santeria and Palo Mayombe. This has happened before in Newark. In 2004, a woman was found guilty of stealing human remains from Holy Sepulchre Cemetery and Mount Pleasant Cemetery for rituals.
The city’s first Jewish cemetery was the short-lived Belmont Cemetery built in 1858 on what is today a housing projects on Irvine Turner Boulevard. It was closed four years later, and moved to Hillside. The B’nai Abraham Cemetery was Newark’s next Jewish cemetery and with the relocation of the Belmont Cemetery, it is now the oldest surviving one. The Grove Street Hebrew Cemetery, founded in 1885. is one of five Jewish cemeteries.
Although it is smaller than the others in terms of acreage, it is the resting place of 10,000 people. It is divided into 38 sections belonging to different synagogues and landsmanshaftn (landsmanshaftn were fraternal societies that helped Jewish immigrants assimilate and ensured them a proper burial.)
The Jewish community flourished in Newark with cultural strongholds in Clinton Hill and Weequahic. In the mid-20th century, Newark had 59 synagogues citywide. However, after the Newark riots, many Jewish synagogues were forced to flee to the suburbs to escape the inner-city crime. “The problem is that the descendents of the people buried here no longer live in Newark,” Lilgeberg said. “There’s no real reason for the local community to care.”
