mokomcem 7822 981102 About Mokom Sholom NY Cem. Recording Project +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ About Cemetery Recording Project MOKOM SHOLOM, BAYSIDE and ACACIA CEMETERIES Ozone Park, New York +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ By Florence Marmor The attached file contains information on three cemeteries, Mokom Sholom, Bayside and Acacia, for the reason that we are concentrating on those cemeteries whose death certificates have Bayside cemetery listed as the place of interment. We are working with Mokom Sholom but can not avoid the other two because of the problem with the death certificates. The three cemeteries cover a four block by two block area in Ozone Park, N.Y. Mokom Sholom starts at 80th St. working from Liberty Ave. to Pitkin Ave. almost to 81st St. The entrance is on Pitkin Ave. Bayside begins where Mokom Sholom ends on Liberty and on Pitkin continuing to about 83rd St. There is a fence between Mokom Sholom and Bayside. Acacia begins at about 83rd where Bayside ends and continues to 84th St. also running between Liberty and Pitking. Bayside's entrance is on Pitkin Ave. Acacia's is on Liberty Ave. Mokom Sholom was founded in 1865 by Congregation Darech Amuno which is now on Charles St. in New York, N.Y. It is also known as Bayside Cemetery of the Congregation Darech Amuno. They sold the cemetery about 30 years ago to a Rabbi Applebaum who was brought up on charges by the New York State Attorney General of misappropriation of cemetery funds and gross neglect of the cemetery. The cemetery was taken by the state and promptly turned over to an association of plot owners. It is being managed now by David Jacobson who is the head of United Hebrew Congregation. Darech Amuno in 1866 founded a free burial association and began burying indigent Jews in the Liberty Ave. portion of the cemetery. The front part of the cemetery is a normal cemetery composed of society and family plots. In 1880, Congregation Darech Amuno went into a partnership with United Hebrew Charities (a very large philanthropic organization of the day which today is known as the Jewish Child Care Association) and United Hebrew took over the burials in Mokom Sholom. They continued this partnership with Darech Amuno donating the land and United Hebrew paying the bills and providing the undertaker until 1901 when the free burial ceased to exist. Bayside Cemetery was founded in 1865 by Congregation Shaare Tsedek of Manhattan which still owns it. Congregation Shaare Tsedek was founded in 1848 and Congregation Darech Amuno is an offshoot of Shaare Tsedek. They had an earlier cemetery on Madison Ave. in the 70's and when New York City passed a law forbidding burials in Manhattan they purchased the land for Bayside Cemetery and disinterred all that were buried in Manhattan reburying them in Bayside. Shaare Tsedek is now trying to sell Bayside. Bayside is very badly overgrown and there are portions that no one can get into. Acacia Cemetery was founded in 1891 by the Pike St. Synagogue of Manhattan which is now defunct. The cemetery went into receivership and was taken over by the state. It is also managed by David Jacobson. The records were compiled by David Gevertzman, David Priever and myself with the assistance of Maurice Kessler and other volunteers. We have physically walked the cemeteries searching for monuments. We have located death certs. The file is marked monument when we have found one. It shows also where the information came from either monument, death cert, obituary, will and/or family member, etc. I actually entered the information into the computer. Dashower Society is a society in Mokom Sholom. It is located at the corner of Liberty Avenue and 80th St. It is at Gate 17. Following this sub-heading is a listing of all the persons we know of who are buried in Mokom Sholom Cemetery shown either by a monument existing today or conversations with the manager's office and I. J. Morris Funeral Parlor of Brooklyn, N.Y. which handles the affairs of Dashower Society today. The reason why we embarked on this project: The free burial area had many more monuments than it has today. Darech Amuno between 1961 and 1962 removed many monuments as stated in a letter from Darech Amuno to Mr. Hyman Drucker of Brooklyn, now deceased, who had complained to the Cemetery Commission about his grandmother's monument having been removed by Darech Amuno. We have the correspondence attesting to all this from the Cemetery Commission's own files. Darech Amuno did this "in an attempt to beautify the cemetery". The deed for the sale to Rabbi Applebaum states that 1500 "new graves" can be sold in the area of the free burial. The present manager, David Jacobson, now wishes to sell graves in the free burial area. The Liberty Ave. side has approximatly 200 monuments (from approximately 1890 to 1901) while the 81st St. side has perhaps 50 in the row we have termed the mishmash row and some we have found coming up from the sod placed on the earth on that side. David Gevertzman's great-grandmother and her son are two of those buried in the free burial (on the 81st St. side). There were over 12,000 persons adults, children, infants and stillbirths buried between 1866 and 1901. We are hoping to prevent the sale of "new" graves in this area. The manager contends that this is virgin land. We have a great deal of documentation showing that this is not virgin land. We have aerial survey maps (the earliest is 1924) showing monuments in the area. We have later ones (after 1962) showing the lack of monuments in the barren field. We have the Cemetery Commission's own files where letters state that when there was digging in the barren field bones were found. We have people who know the cemetery for many years and who state that many more monuments stood there. We have found a descendant of Hyman Drucker who went with him to visit their ancestor and remembers where the grave was and that the monument stood there amidst others. We have the United Hebrew Charities annuals which clearly mention the free burial area and its costs to the society yearly including amounts paid to the undertaker, Jacob Finkelstone. We have the incorporation papers for Darech Amuno's Free Burial Society. We have much more. In addition, articles have been published in Newsday, The Queens Tribune, The Jewish Week, etc. regarding our fight to save the free burial area. Note: There are other files that are connected to this one listing the societies at all three cemeteries. This file is the very latest update completed 9 Oct 95. It contains everything in the old files plus all the information obtained since. See our web page on Mokom Sholom Cemetery, Ozone Park, N.Y. at: http://www.jewishinterest.com The MOKOM SHOLOM database is distributed as MOKOMCEM.EXE (100k) in an archive (ZIP self-extracting format) that contains executables and documentation. To download, follow these step: 1) Via Internet (AOL, ATT, Prodigy etc.) go to: ftp://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/genealogy/INDEX.html 2) Then: text/ -> jewish/ -> mokomcem.exe 3) Click mokemcem.exe. A 'Save as' window will appear. Determine the directory/subdirectory/filename where you wish to save file. 4) Click 'save' to download the file. 5) After downloading, just click on the filename, it will self-extract and be readable. [BIK 11/2/98] ---------------- 2 Nov 1998fm]bik Provider: Florence Marmor +---------------------------------------------------------------------+