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Central Jewish cemetery in Samara, Russia

Samara is a city in Russia outside the Pale of Settlement. The Jewish population appeared there in the second half of the 19th century and ranged from 1.5% in 1897 to 4% in the 1920s. By the mid-1990s, it accounted for 0.67% of the townspeople.

The Jewish cemetery appeared in the city in 1867. It is located on Yuzovskaya Street in the Zheleznodorozhny District. Covers an area of ​​1.94 hectares. According to rough estimates, there are more than 3 thousand burials on it. Since the 1970s, the city's Jewish community has declined. Jews emigrated to other countries.

The cemetery was in a deplorable state for a long time. Only in 2019 did the volunteers begin work on putting things in order. In the course of the work, they found out that some of the tombstones could not be restored or it is impossible read information on them, since in the 1920s and 1930s they were made of sandstone.

The cemetery is closed for today. On it, only additional burial of relatives is possible. Therefore, several names are applied at once on many gravestones.

Burials in the cemetery are cataloged. There are more than 446 graves in the electronic register. More than two dozen of them do not contain chronological or anthroponymical data.

In the cemetery, one can find horizontal slabs, traditional for the Soviet memorial tradition, as well as steles and graves with vertical slabs. For example, on the grave of the Khmelnik family, the slab lies vertically. It bears the names: Iosif Borisovich (1879-1946), Sara Iosifovna (1909-1972), Khana Aronovna (1955). The tombstone of Mirkina Khaya Riva Nokhimovna (1879-1942) is made in the form of a sarcophagus with a slab.

Noteworthy is the family burial of the Grunkins, on which there are inscriptions in Hebrew on the gravestones, and the date of death is indicated according to the Jewish calendar from the creation of the world: Emma Aleksandrovna (27 Tammuz 5775), Alexander Yakovlevich (4 Nisan 5739), Rosa Solomonovna (17 Cheshvan 5748). Here is the grave of Abram Borisovich Fridman with the date of 30 Nisan 5776.

The cemetery has more than 40 gravestones depicting the Star of David. You can also find an image of a menorah. For example, on the gravestones of Dora Grigorievna Venger (1913-1999), Boris Vladimirovich Vlasov (1978-2014), Yefim Grigorievich Vaiman Chaim (1912-1991).

In addition to national symbols on the gravestones, you can also see professional ones. So, on the graves of Yakubovich Grigory Kuzmich (1932-2003) and Shapiro Rita Efimovna (1918-2010), a symbol of medicine is inscribed, a snake wrapped around a bowl.