Old Jewish cemetery in Hodonín

The Old Jewish Cemetery in Hodonín once stood along today's Velkomoravská street, roughly 700 meters southwest of the town center, near the roundabout on the road leading toward Lužice and on to Břeclav. Today the site is occupied by a park named after the writer Gabriela Preissová, with only a small symbolic cluster of historic gravestones and a modern memorial marking what remains of the cemetery's history.

When was the cemetery established?

The first records of the cemetery date to 1620, coinciding with the period when an organized Jewish community was taking shape in Hodonín (Jewish settlement in the town, however, reaches back to the mid-16th century, with the oldest surviving record from 1564). The burial ground was enlarged several times — in 1693, 1820 and 1871 — eventually reaching an area of nearly 8,000 square meters (7,918 m² precisely). The oldest preserved gravestone bore the date 1674, though burials at the site began earlier still.

How many graves did it hold?

According to municipal documentation, the cemetery held between several hundred and roughly a thousand graves, arranged in irregular rows running north to south. The older tombstones were carved in a Baroque-Classicist style, decorated with typical Jewish funerary symbols — the blessing hands of the Kohanim, Levite pitchers, and the Star of David. They were made mainly of sandstone, marble and limestone, with Hebrew inscriptions; later stones also carried German and Czech text. Burials at the old cemetery continued until 1920, when the community switched to a newly established Jewish cemetery elsewhere in the town.

What happened to Hodonín's Jewish community?

The Jewish community of Hodonín had a long and turbulent history. By the late 17th century, a Jewish quarter of about thirty houses and a synagogue existed on an island in the Morava River, its residents engaged among other things in viticulture. In 1774, the local feudal lord, acting under decrees issued by Maria Theresa, ordered the expulsion of the community, which at the time numbered 415 people — though the community was later reestablished in the town. Its fate in the 20th century was sealed by the Holocaust: in 1943, all 222 Jewish residents of Hodonín were deported via the assembly point in Uherský Brod to the Terezín ghetto, and from there to extermination camps further east. Organized religious life in the town had already effectively ended before that; after the war, the small number of survivors was administratively affiliated with the Jewish community in Kyjov, and virtually no Jewish community remains in Hodonín today.

Why did the cemetery disappear from the town's landscape?

Starting in the 1960s, municipal authorities pushed to remove the former burial ground. Between 1973 and 1980, the cemetery was effectively liquidated — some of the gravestones were relocated to the new Jewish cemetery, while the site itself was turned into a municipal park named after the writer Gabriela Preissová. A small symbolic trace of the site's history was preserved, however: six of the older gravestones were grouped together, alongside a modern memorial commemorating both the deceased and the story of the cemetery's disappearance.

Is the site protected as a monument?

Yes. The remnants of the cemetery, together with the preserved gravestones, are listed as a cultural monument of the Czech Republic. This formal protection is meant to acknowledge the site's significance as a testimony to the centuries-long presence of a Jewish community in Hodonín, even though physically only a small, symbolic trace of the original burial ground survives within the town park today.

Frequently asked questions

Can original gravestones still be seen at the former cemetery site? Yes, though only in very limited number — six older gravestones and a modern memorial are preserved symbolically within Gabriela Preissová Park.

Where did the remaining gravestones go after the cemetery was liquidated? Some were moved to the new Jewish cemetery in Hodonín, established after burials at the old site ended in 1920.

Is the site easy to reach for visitors? Yes, the former cemetery now lies within a publicly accessible town park on Velkomoravská street, close to the center of Hodonín.