Situated on a hill 1.5km north-east of the Old Town, the city's Old Jewish Cemetery goes beyond just being the resting place of Lublin's early Jewish population. The grave of one Jakub Kopelman, who died in 1541, is the oldest Jewish tombstone in Poland that is still in its original place. The cemetery is also the resting place of many representatives of the Lublin qahal - rabbis, scholars and Jewish leaders, such as Jacob Isaac Horowitz - the Hasidic 'Seer of Lublin', whose grave has the shape of ohel - a grating metal shield over a stone matzeva (ENG: Jewish Headstone). Burials were carried out there until the 19th century, until the New Jewish Cemetery was opened. Each of the preserved matzewa is a kind of wonderful masterpiece of stonemasonry art, despite the scarring of war. The cemetery was almost completely devastated during World War II, reduced from several thousand headstones to around 200 that remain today. Sadly, acts of vandalism and the destruction of the cemetery also occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.
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