In this episode of berlin bones, my friend Sasha Lyamina takes me on a walk through the Jewish Cemetery in Weißensee — considered the second-largest Jewish cemetery in Europe, with around 115,000 graves spread across an area the size of 100 football fields. (The largest is in Łódź, Poland.)
Sasha and I first met at a festival, where we instantly connected over our shared fascination with cemeteries. That meeting eventually led to us co-organizing the Deadly Matters exhibition last summer, during which we spent countless hours at the Georgen Parochial Cemetery II — with walks, talks, and installations.
With a background in anthropology and roots in a Jewish family from Russia, Sasha eventually found her way to working at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. It was through this work that she became familiar with the Weißensee Cemetery — and drawn to exploring it beyond historical facts.
In this episode, Sasha shares some of her favorite graves, stories and personalities she discovered here, along with insights into Jewish mourning and burial traditions — including the practices of Sitting Shiva (seven days of mourning) and Kriah (the ritual tearing of clothing as a sign of grief). We also talk about the ways the cemetery reflects a blending of religious and cultural identities, e.g. when post-Soviet communities bring their cultural practices into the cemetery.
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