Kozma Street Cemetery
The Kozma Street Cemetery is the biggest Jewish cemetery of Budapest, Hungary. It is located next to the New Public Cemetery; the Jewish cemetery, one of the largest in Europe, is well known for its unusual monuments and mausoleums. Unusually for a Jewish cemetery, these include sculpted human figures and elaborate mausoleums in a variety of styles, most notably several mausoleums in the art nouveau or Jugendstil style. Kozma Street Cemetery was opened in 1891 by the Neolog Jewish community of Budapest, it is the largest Jewish cemetery of Budapest as well as being one of the biggest of Europe. During its history it has been the burial place of more than 300,000 people, it still serves the Hungarian Jewish community, the third largest in Europe. In 2016, the remains of about 20 people, believed to be Jews who were among the thousands shot on the banks of the Danube River in 1944-1945 by the Hungarian Arrow Cross, which were found during the renovation of a bridge in 2011, were brought to burial at the Kozma Street Cemetery.
The green tile-clad mausoleum of the Schmidl family by Ödön Lechner and Bela Lajta, drawing its inspiration form Hungarian folk art, is considered an important example of Magyar-Jewish architectural style, as is the domed cemetery chapel by Bela Lajta. Jewish Cemeteries of Budapest at Jewish.hu
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a country located in Northwestern Europe. The European portion of the Netherlands consists of twelve separate provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with Belgium and the United Kingdom. Together with three island territories in the Caribbean Sea—Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba— it forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the official language is Dutch, but a secondary official language in the province of Friesland is West Frisian. The six largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Tilburg. Amsterdam is the country's capital, while The Hague holds the seat of the States General and Supreme Court; the Port of Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe, the largest in any country outside Asia. The country is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union.
It hosts several intergovernmental organisations and international courts, many of which are centered in The Hague, dubbed'the world's legal capital'. Netherlands means'lower countries' in reference to its low elevation and flat topography, with only about 50% of its land exceeding 1 metre above sea level, nearly 17% falling below sea level. Most of the areas below sea level, known as polders, are the result of land reclamation that began in the 16th century. With a population of 17.30 million people, all living within a total area of 41,500 square kilometres —of which the land area is 33,700 square kilometres —the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. It is the world's second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products, owing to its fertile soil, mild climate, intensive agriculture; the Netherlands was the third country in the world to have representative government, it has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a unitary structure since 1848.
The country has a tradition of pillarisation and a long record of social tolerance, having legalised abortion and human euthanasia, along with maintaining a progressive drug policy. The Netherlands abolished the death penalty in 1870, allowed women's suffrage in 1917, became the world's first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001, its mixed-market advanced economy had the thirteenth-highest per capita income globally. The Netherlands ranks among the highest in international indexes of press freedom, economic freedom, human development, quality of life, as well as happiness; the Netherlands' turbulent history and shifts of power resulted in exceptionally many and varying names in different languages. There is diversity within languages; this holds for English, where Dutch is the adjective form and the misnomer Holland a synonym for the country "Netherlands". Dutch comes from Theodiscus and in the past centuries, the hub of Dutch culture is found in its most populous region, home to the capital city of Amsterdam.
Referring to the Netherlands as Holland in the English language is similar to calling the United Kingdom "Britain" by people outside the UK. The term is so pervasive among potential investors and tourists, that the Dutch government's international websites for tourism and trade are "holland.com" and "hollandtradeandinvest.com". The region of Holland consists of North and South Holland, two of the nation's twelve provinces a single province, earlier still, the County of Holland, a remnant of the dissolved Frisian Kingdom. Following the decline of the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Flanders, Holland became the most economically and politically important county in the Low Countries region; the emphasis on Holland during the formation of the Dutch Republic, the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo-Dutch Wars in the 16th, 17th and 18th century, made Holland serve as a pars pro toto for the entire country, now considered either incorrect, informal, or, depending on context, opprobrious. Nonetheless, Holland is used in reference to the Netherlands national football team.
The region called the Low Countries and the Country of the Netherlands. Place names with Neder, Nieder and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in places all over Europe, they are sometimes used in a deictic relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Oben, Superior or Haut. In the case of the Low Countries / Netherlands the geographical location of the lower region has been more or less downstream and near the sea; the geographical location of the upper region, changed tremendously over time, depending on the location of the economic and military power governing the Low Countries area. The Romans made a distinction between the Roman provinces of downstream Germania Inferior and upstream Germania Superior; the designation'Low' to refer to the region returns again in the 10th century Duchy of Lower Lorraine, that covered much of the Low Countries. But this time the corresponding Upper region is Upper Lorraine, in nowadays Northern France; the Dukes of Burgundy, who ruled the Low Countries in the 15th century, used the term les pays de par deçà for the Low Countries as opposed to les pays de par delà for their original
Israel
Israel the State of Israel, is a country in Western Asia, located on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. It has land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan on the east, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the east and west and Egypt to the southwest; the country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israel's economic and technological center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, although the state's sovereignty over Jerusalem has only partial recognition. Israel has evidence of the earliest migration of hominids out of Africa. Canaanite tribes are archaeologically attested since the Middle Bronze Age, while the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged during the Iron Age; the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel around 720 BCE. Judah was conquered by the Babylonian and Hellenistic empires and had existed as Jewish autonomous provinces.
The successful Maccabean Revolt led to an independent Hasmonean kingdom by 110 BCE, which in 63 BCE however became a client state of the Roman Republic that subsequently installed the Herodian dynasty in 37 BCE, in 6 CE created the Roman province of Judea. Judea lasted as a Roman province until the failed Jewish revolts resulted in widespread destruction, expulsion of Jewish population and the renaming of the region from Iudaea to Syria Palaestina. Jewish presence in the region has persisted to a certain extent over the centuries. In the 7th century CE, the Levant was taken from the Byzantine Empire by the Arabs and remained in Muslim control until the First Crusade of 1099, followed by the Ayyubid conquest of 1187; the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt extended its control over the Levant in the 13th century until its defeat by the Ottoman Empire in 1517. During the 19th century, national awakening among Jews led to the establishment of the Zionist movement in the diaspora followed by waves of immigration to Ottoman Syria and British Mandate Palestine.
In 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency, rejected by Arab leaders; the following year, the Jewish Agency declared the independence of the State of Israel, the subsequent 1948 Arab–Israeli War saw Israel's establishment over most of the former Mandate territory, while the West Bank and Gaza were held by neighboring Arab states. Israel has since fought several wars with Arab countries, since the Six-Day War in 1967 held occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip, it extended its laws to the Golan East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories is the world's longest military occupation in modern times. Efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in a final peace agreement. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have been signed.
In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a democratic state. The country has a liberal democracy, with a parliamentary system, proportional representation, universal suffrage; the prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature. Israel is a developed country and an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member, with the 32nd-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2017; the country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentages of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. Israel has the highest standard of living in the Middle East, has one of the highest life expectancies in the world. Furthermore, Israel ranked 11th in the UN's 2018 World Happiness Report. Upon independence in 1948, the country formally adopted the name "State of Israel" after other proposed historical and religious names including Eretz Israel and Judea, were considered but rejected.
In the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term "Israeli" to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have been used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel and the entire Jewish people respectively; the name "Israel" in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, according to the Hebrew Bible, was given the name after he wrestled with the angel of the Lord. Jacob's twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. Jacob and his sons had lived in Canaan but were forced by famine to go into Egypt for four generations, lasting 430 years, until Moses, a great-great grandson of Jacob, led the Israelites back into Canaan during the "Exodus"; the earliest known archaeological artifact to mention the word "Israel" as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity and the Bahá'í Faith.
Under British Mandate, the whole region was known as Palestine (Hebre
Cemetery
A cemetery or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word cemetery implies that the land is designated as a burial ground and applied to the Roman catacombs; the term graveyard is used interchangeably with cemetery, but a graveyard refers to a burial ground within a churchyard. The intact or cremated remains of people may be interred in a grave referred to as burial, or in a tomb, an "above-ground grave", a mausoleum, niche, or other edifice. In Western cultures, funeral ceremonies are observed in cemeteries; these ceremonies or rites of passage differ according to religious beliefs. Modern cemeteries include crematoria, some grounds used for both, continue as crematoria as a principal use long after the interment areas have been filled. Taforalt cave in Morocco is the oldest known cemetery in the world, it was the resting place of at least 34 Iberomaurusian individuals, the bulk of which have been dated to 15,100 to 14,000 years ago. Neolithic cemeteries are sometimes referred to by the term "grave field".
They are one of the chief sources of information on ancient and prehistoric cultures, numerous archaeological cultures are defined by their burial customs, such as the Urnfield culture of the European Bronze Age. From about the 7th century, in Europe a burial was under the control of the Church and could only take place on consecrated church ground. Practices varied, but in continental Europe, bodies were buried in a mass grave until they had decomposed; the bones were exhumed and stored in ossuaries, either along the arcaded bounding walls of the cemetery or within the church under floor slabs and behind walls. In most cultures those who were vastly rich, had important professions, were part of the nobility or were of any other high social status were buried in individual crypts inside or beneath the relevant place of worship with an indication of their name, date of death and other biographical data. In Europe, this was accompanied by a depiction of their coat of arms. Most others were buried in graveyards again divided by social status.
Mourners who could afford the work of a stonemason had a headstone engraved with a name, dates of birth and death and sometimes other biographical data, set up over the place of burial. The more writing and symbols carved on the headstone, the more expensive it was; as with most other human property such as houses and means of transport, richer families used to compete for the artistic value of their family headstone in comparison to others around it, sometimes adding a statue on the top of the grave. Those who could not pay for a headstone at all had some religious symbol made from wood on the place of burial such as a Christian cross; some families hired a blacksmith and had large crosses made from various metals put on the place of burial. Starting in the early 19th century, the burial of the dead in graveyards began to be discontinued, due to rapid population growth in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, continued outbreaks of infectious disease near graveyards and the limited space in graveyards for new interment.
In many European states, burial in graveyards was outlawed altogether through government legislation. Instead of graveyards new places of burial were established away from populated areas and outside of old towns and city centers. Many new cemeteries became municipally owned or were run by their own corporations, thus independent from churches and their churchyards. In some cases, skeletons were moved into ossuaries or catacombs. A large action of this type occurred in 18th century Paris when human remains were transferred from graveyards all over the city to the Catacombs of Paris; the bones of an estimated 6 million people are to be found there. An early example of a landscape-style cemetery is Père Lachaise in Paris; this embodied the idea of state- rather than church-controlled burial, a concept that spread through the continent of Europe with the Napoleonic invasions. This could include the opening of cemeteries by joint stock companies; the shift to municipal cemeteries or those established by private companies was accompanied by the establishing of landscaped burial grounds outside the city.
In Britain the movement was driven by public health concerns. The Rosary Cemetery in Norwich was opened in 1819 as a burial ground for all religious backgrounds. Similar private non-denominational cemeteries were established near industrialising towns with growing populations, such as Manchester and Liverpool; each cemetery required a separate Act of Parliament for authorisation, although the capital was raised through the formation of joint-stock companies. In the first 50 years of the 19th century the population of London more than doubled from 1 million to 2.3 million. The small parish churchyards were becoming dangerously overcrowded, decaying matter infiltrating the water supply was causing epidemics; the issue became acute after the cholera epidemic of 1831, which killed 52,000 people in Britain alone, putting unprecedented pressure on the country's burial capacity. Concerns were raised about the potential public health hazard arising from the inhalation of gases generated from human putrefaction under the prevailing miasma theory of disease.
Legislative action was slow in coming, but in 1832 Parliament acknowledged the need for the establishment of large municipal cemeter
Vienna Central Cemetery
The Vienna Central Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in the world by number of interred, is the most famous cemetery among Vienna's nearly 50 cemeteries. The cemetery's name is descriptive of its significance as Vienna's biggest cemetery, not of its geographic location, as it is not situated in the city center of the Austrian capital, but on the outskirts, in the outer city district of Simmering. Unlike many others, the Vienna Central Cemetery is not one that has evolved with the passing of time; the decision to establish a new, big cemetery for Vienna came in 1863 when it became clear that – due to industrialization – the city's population would increase to such an extent that the existing communal cemeteries would prove to be insufficient. City leaders expected that Vienna capital of the large Austro-Hungarian Empire, would grow to four million inhabitants by the end of the 20th century, as no-one foresaw the Empire's collapse in 1918; the city council therefore assigned an area outside of the city's borders and of such a gigantic dimension, that it would suffice for a long time to come.
They decided in 1869 that a flat area in Simmering should be the site of the future Central Cemetery. The cemetery was designed in 1870; the cemetery was opened on All Saints' Day in 1874, far outside Vienna's city borders. However the consecration of the cemetery was not without controversy: the interdenominational character of the new cemetery – the different faith groups being interred on the same ground – met with fierce resistance in conservative circles of the Roman Catholic Church; this argument became more aggressive when the city announced that it did not want an official Catholic opening of the new cemetery – but gave a substantial amount of money toward the construction of a segregated Jewish section. In the end, the groups reached an agreement resulting in the Catholic representatives opening the Central Cemetery with a small ceremony. Due to refraining from having a large public showing, the new cemetery was inaugurated unnoticed in the early morning hours of 31 October 1874 by Vienna Mayor Baron Cajetan von Felder and Cardinal Joseph Othmar Rauscher to avoid an escalation of the public controversy.
The official opening of the Central Cemetery occurred the following day. The first burial was that of Jacob Zelzer, followed by 15 others that day; the grave of Jacob Zelzer still exists near the administration building at the cemetery wall. The cemetery spans 2.5 km2 with up to 25 burials daily. It is the second largest cemetery, after the 4 km2 of Hamburg's Ohlsdorf Cemetery, the largest in Europe by number of interments and area; the Viennese joke that the Central Cemetery is "half the size of Zurich, but twice as much fun", as the cemetery is half as large as the city of Zurich. The Central Cemetery has a dead population of twice the present living residents of Vienna. Across Simmeringer Hauptstrasse from the main gate is the Crematorium, built by Clemens Holzmeister in 1922 in the style of an oriental fortress; the church in the centre of the cemetery is the St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery Church, it used to be called Dr. Karl-Lueger-Gedächtniskirche because of the crypt of the former mayor of Vienna below the high altar.
This church in Art Nouveau style was built in 1908–1910 by Max Hegele. The crypt of the Austrian Federal Presidents is located in front of the church. Beneath the sarcophagus, is a burial vault with stairs leading down to a circular room whose walls are lined with niches where the deceased in an urn or coffin can be interred. In its early incarnations, it was so unpopular due to the distance from the city center that the authorities had to think of ways to make it more attractive – hence the development of the Ehrengräber or honorary graves as a kind of tourist attraction. Vienna has been a city of music since time immemorial, the municipality expressed gratitude to composers by granting them monumental tombs. Interred in the Central Cemetery are notables such as Ludwig van Beethoven. A cenotaph honours Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, buried in nearby St. Marx Cemetery. In addition to the Catholic section, the cemetery houses a Protestant cemetery and two Jewish cemeteries. Although the older of the two, established in 1863, was destroyed by the Nazis during the Kristallnacht, around 60,000 graves remain intact.
Cemetery records indicate 79,833 Jewish burials as of 10 July 2011. Prominent burials here include those of the Rothschild family and that of the author Arthur Schnitzler; the second Jewish cemetery is still in use today. There were 58,804 Jewish burials in the new section as of 21 November 2007. Officials discovered the desecration of 43 Jewish graves in the two Jewish sections on 29 June 2012 as an anti-Semitic act – the stones and slabs were toppled or damaged. Since 1876, Muslims have been buried at Vienna's Zentralfriedhof; the dead are buried according to Austrian law, in a coffin, in contrast to the Islamic ritual practice. The opening of the new Islamic cemetery of the Islamic Faith Community took place on 3 October 2008 in Liesing; the cemetery contains Russian Orthodox burial grounds and plots dedicated for
Buren
Buren is a town and municipality in the Betuwe region of the Netherlands. The name originated from the word the Dutch word "buren". Buren is located in a province of the Netherlands, it is part of the landscape of Betuwe, a fertile strip of land between two branches of Rhine-Meuse Delta, the Nederrijn in the north and the Waal in the south. Population centers include: The earliest known settlement of the region occurred as early as 772; the castle was built by the Lords of Buren and was first mentioned in 1298. The town was granted city rights in 1395 by Sir Alard IV of Buren which led to the construction of a defensive wall and a moat, significant portions of which still stand. In 1492, the region was promoted to a county but had limited economic influence due to its geographic isolation. By 1574, the Catholic parish church of Saint-Lambert became Calvinist Reformed Protestant; the Castle came into the possession of the House of Orange, the royal family of the Netherlands. The Dutch royal family has been known to use the name van Buren as an alias to give themselves some degree of anonymity.
William III of England obtained the title Buren. The Dutch royal family, still use this as a title; the Castle was demolished between 1804 and 1883. The eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren, traced his ancestry to inhabitants of the city, who had taken the surname Van Buren after relocating to the Dutch colony of New Netherland in what is now the state of New York. Buren has two museums: The Museum of the Royal Military Police, located in a 17th-century orphanage; the Museum of the Dutch Royal Family, located in the historic city hall. It is home to De Prins Van Oranje, a restored windmill; the title "Count or Countess of Buren and Leerdam" is held by the Dutch monarchy due to Prince William of Orange's marriage to the Countess of Buren, Anna of Egmont, in 1551. As a result, the county and the town of Buren fall under the control of the Royal House of Orange-Nassau. Dutch: 92.9% African: 0.7% European: 4.7% Arabian: 0.5% Other: 1.2% Kinderhook, New York, United States Van Buren House of Egmond Official website
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia. With a population of about 430,000, it is one of the smaller capitals of Europe but still the country's largest city; the greater metropolitan area is home to more than 650,000 people. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia, occupying both banks of the River Danube and the left bank of the River Morava. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital; the city's history has been influenced by people of different nations and religions, namely Austrians, Croats, Germans, Jews and Slovaks. It was the coronation site and legislative center of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1536 to 1783, has been home to many Slovak and German historical figures. Bratislava is the political and economic centre of Slovakia, it is the seat of the parliament and the Slovak Executive. It has several universities, many museums, theatres and other cultural and educational institutions. Many of Slovakia's large businesses and financial institutions have headquarters there. In 2017, Bratislava was ranked as the third richest region of the European Union by GDP per capita.
GDP at purchasing power parity is about three times higher than in other Slovak regions. Bratislava receives around 1 million tourists every year; the city received its contemporary name in 1919. Until it was known in English by its German name, since after 1526 it was dominated by the Habsburg Monarchy and the city had a relevant ethnic-German population; that is the term from which the pre-1919 Czech names are derived. The city's Hungarian name, was given after the castle's first castellan, "Poson"; the origin of the name is unclear: it might come from the Czech Pos or the German Poscho, which are personal names. The medieval settlement Brezalauspurc is sometimes attributed to Bratislava, but the actual location of Brezalauspurc is under scholarly debate; the city's modern name is credited to Pavel Jozef Šafárik's misinterpretation of Braslav as Bratislav in his analysis of mediaeval sources, which led him to invent the term Břetislaw, which became Bratislav. During the revolution of 1918–1919, the name'Wilsonov' or'Wilsonstadt' was proposed by American Slovaks, as he supported national self-determination.
The name Bratislava, used only by some Slovak patriots, became official in March 1919. Other alternative names of the city in the past include Greek: Ιστρόπολις Istropolis, Czech: Prešpurk, French: Presbourg, Italian: Presburgo, Latin: Posonium, Romanian: Pojon and Serbo-Croatian: Požun / Пожун. In older documents, confusion can be caused by the Latin forms Bratislavia, Wratislavia etc. which refer to Wrocław, not Bratislava. The first known permanent settlement of the area began with the Linear Pottery Culture, around 5000 BC in the Neolithic era. About 200 BC, the Celtic Boii tribe founded the first significant settlement, a fortified town known as an oppidum, they established a mint, producing silver coins known as biatecs. The area fell under Roman influence from the 1st to the 4th century AD and was made part of the Danubian Limes, a border defence system; the Romans introduced grape growing to the area and began a tradition of winemaking, which survives to the present. The Slavs arrived from the East between the 6th centuries during the Migration Period.
As a response to onslaughts by Avars, the local Slavic tribes rebelled and established Samo's Empire, the first known Slavic political entity. In the 9th century, the castles at Bratislava and Devín were important centres of the Slavic states: the Principality of Nitra and Great Moravia. Scholars have debated the identification as fortresses of the two castles built in Great Moravia, based on linguistic arguments and because of the absence of convincing archaeological evidence; the first written reference to a settlement named "Brezalauspurc" dates to 907 and is related to the Battle of Pressburg, during which a Bavarian army was defeated by the Hungarians. It is connected to the fall of Great Moravia weakened by its own inner decline and under the attacks of the Hungarians; the exact location of the battle remains unknown, some interpretations place it west of Lake Balaton. In the 10th century, the territory of Pressburg became part of Hungary, it developed as a key administrative centre on the kingdom's frontier.
This strategic position destined the city to be the site of frequent attacks and battles, but brought it economic development and high political status. It was granted its first known "town privileges" in 1291 by the Hungarian King Andrew III, was declared a free royal town in 1405 by King Sigismund. In 1436 he authorized the town to use its own coat of arms; the Kingdom of Hungary was defeated by the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Mohács in 1526. The Turks failed to conquer it. Owing to Ottoman advances into Hungarian territory, the city was designated the new capital of Hungary in 1536, after becoming part of the Habsburg Monarchy and marking the beginning of a new era; the city became a coronation town and the seat of kings, the nobility and all major organisations and offices. Between 1536 and 1830, eleven Hungarian kings and queens were crowned at St. Martin's Cathedral. The
