Project Leader:

John J. Kovacs

JewishGen Liaison/Advisor:

Nolan Altman

Project Description

The objective is to secure sufficient funding to photograph 18^th and 19^th century headstones and photograph 20^th century cemetery books for the Jewish cemetery in Miskolc, Hungary. The 18^th and 19^th century written records were lost in the Holocaust and such information is currently only available by visiting and searching the overgrown part of the cemetery. A list of names of 20^th century deaths were recently made available at the Miskolc synagogue. Another list of 20^th century burials is available at the Miskolc cemetery. We estimate that there are approximately 16,000 18^th and 19^th century headstones, which will be documented by taking 10,000-12,000 photographs in addition to 600 photographs of pages of the 20^th century cemetery records.

Miskolc is the third largest city in Hungary. In the 1940s it was reported to have a Jewish population of about 14,000. The city's total population was at that time about 100,000. The cemetery was started about 1792 and its size is reported to be 6 1/2 hectares or 65,000 m². A picture of the cemetery's surface and geographic location in Miskolc can be accessed at http://binged.it/qZXHa8.

The project involves removing vegetation from the overgrown part of the cemetery, cleaning headstones, and highlighting inscriptions as necessary using a medium that will not contribute to deterioration of the stones. Workers will then photograph each stone and map its location. Volunteers will be recruited from among JewishGen researchers to transcribe the inscriptions and burial locations using the JOWBR template to be integrated into the JOWBR database at http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery/

These records will be indexed and transcribed by JewishGen volunteers.

Estimated Cost

The total cost is estimated at $11,000-$13,000 based on a unit cost of $1.00 for each photographic image.

The projects has been divided into three phases to allow work to proceed while funding is being raised through donations to the Hungarian SIG The project will require funding from Jewish Gen accounts such as H-SIG account and JewishGen-erosity.

The project will be organized in phases as follows:

1. Photograph the approximately 600 pages of two cemetery books. Estimated cost $600.00
2. Clean as necessary and photograph approximately 600 gravestones from the town of Hejocsaba that have been transferred to the Miskolc cemetery. Estimated cost $600.00
3. Clean as necessary and photograph the remaining 18^th and 19^th century gravestones in phases of approximately 1,000 graves at a time as sufficient funds are raised. Estimated cost $11,000-$12,000
4. Peter Szlukovinyi, acting rabbi of the Miskolc synagogue, has approved and is participating in the project. He provided his written authorization allowing JewishGen to photograph available burial records and headstones and to create and publish an index to the burials

Project Coordinator John J. Kovacs will contribute $600.00 to JewishGen to cover the first phase of the project upon approval of this project.

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Updated 19 Jan 2012 by LA