Fir Street Cemetery

In the mid-nineteenth century, farmland west of Cleveland was purchased by real estate speculators and subdivided for development. The Fir Street Cemetery, as it is currently known, occupies just eight residential lots in what first became Brooklyn Township and is now incorporated within Cleveland. In spite of its small size, the burial ground is historically three separate graveyards.

The oldest portion of the cemetery is the middle 3.5 lots purchased by the Hungarian Aid Society, established to assist Jewish émigrés in need, including with burial. The lots to the east were bought by the Chevra Kadisha Society and Anshe Emeth, historically the largest and oldest orthodox synagogue in Cleveland, acquired the lots on the west side of the block. By the early-1900s, most of the graveyard was known informally as the Hungarian Cemetery, with the western section retaining its identity as the Anshe Emeth Cemetery.

The first burial, in 1865, was that of Aaron Horwitz, the two- or three-year-old son of James (née Jacob) Horwitz, who received his medical degree from the University of Vienna, and Fannie Horwitz. Dr. Horwitz was a supporter of the 1848 Hungarian War of Independence and fled Galicia when the revolution failed.

Surprisingly, given the small size of the Fir Street Cemetery, the last burials didn’t occur until 1971. By then, the geographic center of the Jewish community had moved eastward and over time, the graveyard deteriorated, in part due to vandalism. A first step towards the restoration of the burial ground was an enumeration in 1988 of the grave markers by the Jewish Genealogy Society of Cleveland.

Cleveland Housing Court Judge Raymond J. Pianka attended elementary school a few blocks from the cemetery and had been fascinated as a boy by the Hebrew inscriptions on some of the markers. Judge Pianka, neighborhood residents, and Park Synagogue — the successor to the merger of the Anshe Emeth and Beth Tefilo congregations — restored and renovated the Fir Street Cemetery from 2007 to 2009. Ongoing maintenance is provided by Park Synagogue with assistance from the Jewish Community Federation, which obtained the deed to the Hungarian or B’nai Abraham cemetery in 1963.

Many notable people are buried in the Fir Street Cemetery, including founders and rabbis of mid- to late-19th century synagogues in Cleveland. For example, Moses A. Adelstein, who founded the first Russian synagogue and also organized the first free Jewish cemetery, was not himself laid to rest in Lansing Cemetery, but rather here. Of lesser repute is Harry “Czar” Bernstein, a bank, theater, and hotel owner and political boss made infamous for election rigging.