Tuesday, January 4, 2011
News Hate Crime? City Destroys Jewish Cemetery
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 4:46 PM
Snow news is the new tornado news! Our friends at Sheepshead Bites reports that sanitation workers dumped load after load of plowed snow against the fence of Washington Cemetery (on the Bensonhurst-Midwood border) until it collapsed, dumping snow and ice onto the cemetery and destroying an estimated 30 tombstones; a full tally has been impossible because mounds of snow still cover the damage. (The dead at Washington Cemetery are buried much closer together than in a cemetery like Green-Wood; as far as I can tell, it's because Jewish people are buried in simple pine boxes without concrete burial vaults—not, as legend has it, because they are buried standing up.)
As of this morning, the city has continued to dump snow there; families of the deceased whose headstones were damaged have not yet been notified.
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