Hlohovec, Cemetery

The Jewish cemetery in Hlohovec, a National Cultural Monument, is located on Nitrianská Street, on the southeastern edge of the town. Covering a total area of ​​6,086 square meters, it contains approximately 1,800 graves, of which 705 are documented. The oldest date back to the 1830s, when a large group of Jewish family members from Moravia migrated to Hlohovec.
Low semi-arched baroque tombstones made of local gray-ocher sandstone characterize the oldest graves. There are several prominent graves of rabbis, among the most famous of which are those of the first rabbi, Mordechai Deutsch from 1773, which is a pilgrimage site, and of the town’s penultimate chief rabbi, Jozef Lazar Rosenfeld from 1919. A special site is devoted to the grave of surgeon Leopold Bettelheim from1838, who was the personal physician of Austrian Emperor Francis I. The entire area is surrounded by a massive stone and brick wall from the second quarter of the 19th century. On the north side there is a house of mourning from the end of the 18th century, rebuilt in its present form in 1814. Nearby is the main part of the dome of the synagogue tower from 1891, which was demolished in 1960. The composition of the cemetery is completed by the lesser sacral architecture of the tomb of local businessman Markus Dukes and his wife Jeanetta, built in Moorish-Oriental style in around 1917 as a miniature version of Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.

Since 2017, the cemetery has been under the care of the Heritage Museum in Hlohovec, which regularly organizes guided tours for the general public throughout the year and also carries out maintenance and documentation grave sites. The house of mourning contains a small exhibition of objects from the demolished synagogue. The cemetery is still in use; the most recent grave was added in October 2023.