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Photos of the Jewish Cemetery in Rēzekne, Latvia taken by Dave Howard
October 30, 2003
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My guide, Aleksandrs Feigmanis, took me to the old Jewish cemetery in Rezekne, Latvia. He reminded me that this cemetery had gone through two world wars and most of the Jewish population has changed from a majority of the people a hundred years ago to a handful now. As we walked around the cemetery he was looking for headstones with either of the two family names that we know of: Gurevich (Horwitz) and Ioffe (Yaffa). Whenever he saw one of these names on a headstone he pointed it out and I took a picture. We only spent about an hour here. Aleksandrs has on another occasion spent a long time here copying information. It would be a great family history project to come here with a group of people and clean things up and copy the information from the stones.

Original entrance to cemetery on the northwest end. The entrance now is at the other end.

Dave Howard just inside the old entrance.

View out the old gate. The catholic church can be seen in the background.

This farmer is plouging his field the old fashion way just along the way to the cemetery.

Holocaust memorial near the new entrance.

Many of the stones are only set in the soil. Over time they topple over. The softer stones lose surface material in the cold winters.

The cemetery is about 50 yards wid and 300 hundred yards long. There is a creek in a deep gully on the western side (to the left in this photo).

Another view toward the north. See the shadow from the sun. The gully is on the left (west).

Here is looking back the other way toward the south. Now the gully is on the right. There are graves all up the hill on the left.

This is the newer southeastern end of the cemetery.

This stone has a Horwitz variation on it.

This is stone has the Yaffa family name.

You can see the sad condition of this cemetery.

There are tombstones under all those weeds.

More weeds covering the stones.

This stone may belong to a family member.

Another possible relative.

I think this is a Ioffe family member.

A Horwitz family member.

Another Horwitz.

Ioffe family member.