Jewish cemetery with a ceremonial hall

   
At the beginning of the second half of the 19th century, it was important for the local Jewish community to finally have a respectable synagogue and to establish a proper cemetery closer to the town. This was not surprising because in 1861, there were already 614 Jews living in the town, including the suburbs. Until that time, they had mainly used the Jewish cemetery in the nearby municipality of Puklice. The construction of the Jewish cemetery in Jihlava from 1867–1868 was carried out by Rabbi PhDrJoachim Jakob Unger and the chairman of the Jewish Community in Jihlava, Leopold Schnürmann. The final negotiations were held on 3. 4. 1868 in the presence of representatives of the town, the Jewish community of Jihlava, and the owner of the land in the Panenské suburb, Franz Gottfried Czap.

The most valuable documents on the cemetery include a sketch and a plan of the first ceremonial hall, designed and built in 1868 by the Jihlava town builder Eduard Rathauský. He was the co-creator of the plans for the Jihlava synagogue and the designer of many important buildings and residential houses. The plan for the first ceremonial hall shows it as a simple classical building. In the centre of the building, there was a corridor allowing access to the cemetery. A room for the bereaved and mourners was on the right side with a mortuary on the opposite side. The building was about 15.5 × 9 metres and was about 7 metres high. The cemetery was inaugurated in 1869, a year before the Chevra Kadisha fraternal burial society was established in Jihlava. The first funeral took place on 20 December 1870. A tombstone with the name of Rosalie Schulhof, a native of Jemnice and a widow and merchant, who died at the age of 32, can be found in the southwest corner at the end of the cemetery.

A radical reconstruction of the ceremonial hall was carried out at the very beginning of the 20th century. Thanks to the preserved project documentation, the two designs can still be examined today: the unrealised project by the Jihlava builder Ignaz Lang (1845–1927), whose construction company held a prominent position in the town, and the implemented project by the Viennese architect Wilhelm Stiassny (1842–1910), whose original design for the ceremonial hall the local Jewish community decided to use in the end.

At that time, the building councillor Wilhelm Stiassny was based in Vienna I, Krugerstrasse 8, where he also had his studio. The plans bear the date of 12 May 1903 and the heading "Ceremonienhalle am Israel Friedhofe in Iglau". Stiassny placed the ceremonial hall in the centre of an elevated building and built two low wings on the sides. He placed the gravedigger's flat in the right wing and the mortuary and waiting room on the opposite side. The whole magnificent pseudo-Romanesque building with many historicist features was 34.5 metres long, 10.5 metres wide, and about 14 metres high. The preserved building plans allow the interior of the ceremonial hall, which measured 14.5 × 8.5 metres, to be partially reconstructed.

The German newspaper Mährischer Grenzbotegave a comprehensive description of the entire opening ceremony on 20 December 1904. The article pointed out that the construction had been carried out in the summer months of 1904 according to Stiassny's plans. For the celebration, it was decorated beautifully with flowers. Shortly before the ceremony began, the hall filled with a number of distinguished guests. This was followed by speeches highlighting the importance of commemorating the deceased and thanking the building councillor Stiassny and his chief architect Reiss, the Jihlava builder Ignaz Lang, and the city of Jihlava, whose building authority had supported the entire construction from the very beginning. At the end, the chairman of the Chevra Kadisha fraternal burial society, Wilhelm Öesterreicher, thanked everyone on its behalf and handed the ceremonial hall over to the Jewish Community of Jihlava. The actual act of sanctification was performed by Rabbi PhDrJoachim Jakob Unger (1826–1912). A small, and the only surviving, photograph of the building frontage was published in 1929 by Hugo Gold.

On the night of 7 April 1939, anti-Jewish fanatics burned down the central part of the building, the ceremonial hall. A picture of its damaged frontage, taken by an unknown Wehrmacht soldier, a participant in the occupation of Jihlava in April 1939, was posted on the internet at the end of the 20th century.

From 1939–1942, difficult negotiations were held between the Jewish Community of Jihlava and the municipality concerning the central burnt-out part of the building. In the end, the hall was eventually demolished and the Protectorate authorities decided to build a plain wall in its place. The demolition and construction works were carried out by an association of German construction companies in Jihlava. Only two low side buildings, referred to in later years simply as "bungalows” (domky), have remained from the hall. One of them was supposedly used as a warehouse and the other, the former gravedigger's flat, was occupied by a German family between 1941 and 1945 for an annual rent of CZK 600.

In addition to the existing Jewish cemetery, the Jewish Religious Community of Jihlava bought another large plot of land. It wanted to prevent possible problems related to a lack of burial places in the future. It was taken into account that the local community had about 1,500 congregants, and together with the surrounding areas, it had close to 2,000 members. After the liberation in 1945, new protracted negotiations were held. The Protectorate Treaty was declared null and void on the grounds of having been drawn up under duress. Instead of the restitution of all the property of the Jewish Religious Community of Jihlava, a settlement was agreed upon. A smaller part of the land was left to the city and a larger part, with an area of 34,215 square metres, was purchased by the city as pasture for CZK 684,300. The city management was considering building a sports ground and a gymnasium on the acquired land, but in the end, the House of Health complex (Dům zdraví) was set up there, which is currently adjacent to the newly built hospital buildings.

Today, the Jewish Cemetery has a sufficient area of 8,879 m2. Only thanks to the inviolability of the old parts of the cemetery and their intermingling with the new parts has the cemetery retained its unique and fascinating atmosphere of peace and melancholy, despite the removal of the front section with the children's graves, which had to give way to the newly built road on U Cvičiště Street in 1966.

At present, the frontage features a wrought-iron gate with a candlestick motif. In the left part of the cemetery, there is a new ceremonial hall, built in 1969. It was designed by Milena Kubíková-Veselá from Jihlava. Inside the austere hall, which hardly highlights the significance of the place, three marble slabs were installed, which have become the only sad remnant of the original ceremonial hall by Stiassny. On the opposite side, there is a memorial dedicated to all Holocaust victims from Jihlava and its surroundings, unveiled on 7. 5. 1995. A total of 1,379 people were buried in the cemetery, of which 126 were children. Bernhard and Marie Mahler, the parents of the musical genius Gustav Mahler, and Gustav’s five siblings were laid to rest there. Jacob Sommer, father of JUDrErnst, a lawyer, editor, and a prominent German author is also buried there. Other notable names include: Elsa Eisler, the mother of Martin, the prominent architect in Buenos Aires; Betina Fürnberg, the mother of Louis, the prominent German poet, playwright, and diplomat; and Natan Tandler, the father of MUDrJulius, the prominent anatomist and politician, who fled to Moscow to escape the Nazis, where he later died. Also lying here is Jacob Hilsner, the father of Leopold, who was the central figure in the Hilsner Affair, which shook the whole of Europe.

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Literature and other sources 

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