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Jewish cemetery in Troitsk

The southern Ural city of Troitsk was outside the Pale of Settlement. Therefore, the Jewish population appeared in the city from the middle of the 19th century. The Jewish community began to form in the second half of the 19th century. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of Jews in the city did not exceed 0.5 thousand. With the establishment of Soviet power in 1920, the Jewish population of Troitsk decreased. In 1926, 400 Jews lived here, and by 1939 - 206. During the Second World War, the Jewish population increased due to the evacuees. In the late 1970s, no more than 210 Jews lived in the city.

The first burials at the Troitsk Jewish cemetery date back to the 1850s. Local historian V. Vishnevsky studied the location of the graves and put forward the assumption that initially the community received a sufficiently large plot of land for the cemetery, which blocked its possibilities. Therefore, the Jewish cemetery in the city functioned until 1985, when the authorities decided to close it for burials.

The territory of the cemetery is fenced with a stone fence with iron bars. At the cemetery a house for ablutions has been preserved, which is used for other purposes.

The cemetery book of the Troitsk Jewish cemetery has not preserved, so the gravestones are one of the few sources for studying the memorial culture and dynamics of the city's Jewish population.

As of 2017, 313 graves have been identified and cataloged. All of them are conditionally divided into two periods: pre-Soviet (mid-19th century - 1919) - 132 burials and Soviet (1920 - 1985) - 171 graves. On 10 burials, the date of death has not been preserved, therefore it is impossible to attribute them to one or another period.

Of the cataloged burials, 164 belong to men and 143 to women. On six more, it is impossible to determine the gender identity of the deceased, since the surname and initials are indicated on the tombstone. This practice of naming anthroponomical data is characteristic of the Soviet period.

On the graves of the pre-Soviet period, either the Julian or the mixed calendar was used to indicate dates. So, on 130 graves the dates of burial are indicated according to the Julian calendar, and on 69 - according to both the Julian and Hebrew.

On the graves of the Troitsk Jewish cemetery, two types of digital designations are used: the dates of birth and death, or the age of the deceased at the time of burial. These designations were used both in the pre-Soviet and in Soviet periods.