The Jewish section is below the municipal cemetery in a sort of depression in the ground. There is no path from the general cemetery to the Jewish section. You have to jump down from higher ground.
At the far end of the Jewish cemetery is a small old burial hall and this is built adjoining the road but I don't think there is an entrance from the road and no footpath on it either. I think the only entrance is via the general cemetery and jumping down.
The Jewish section is badly overgrown, many tombs and stones are in poor condition. One of the stones is a general memorial to those killed in the Shoah. You will see from the photos that some inscriptions are in Hebrew, some in German and some in Czech and some are a mixture of more than one language. There are burials for people from Olomouc and some towns other than Bzenec.
Some stones include memorials to family killed in the Shoah.
The cemetery is about 20 kms from Straznice. Jiri Fiedler the cemetery expert in Prague says in his book (page 53) that the German name was Bisenz. It's a town in Moravia 240 km SE of Prague and
55 km SE of Brno, 17 km NE of the District town Hodonin. He puts its age at about 14th century. And that's when he says the Jewish community began there.
67 Jewish families are listed in the 17th century, in the mid 19th century about 965 Jews lived there. Fiedler says the Jewish cemetery contains tombstones from the 17th century and many valuable baroque tombs. The ceremonial burial hall was built in the 19th century. In vicinity were other Jewish communities such as Ostroh, Veseli nad Moravou, Kyjov, Kostelec, Zdanice, Zeravice, Korycany. Svatoborice was the site of the refugee camp for Galician Jews during WW I and was also used as a camp by Nazis for family members of refugees and those in mixed marriages.
Ref: Fiedler Jiri, “Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia”. Sefer, Prague, 1991.
Click here for:
Overview of cemetery
Cemetery map
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