Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Mausoleum Doors Taken In $30,000 Looting Of Jewish Cemetery In Queens

More than $30,000 worth of mausoleum doors and air vents were stolen from a historic Jewish cemetery this past weekend, the New York Post reported.

Sometime between Friday afternoon and Sunday, authorities said, a thief took 14 doors and 75 air vents from Beth Olam Jewish Cemetery, in the neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens. The cemetery has been in use since 1851, according to the website of one of its maintaining synagogues, Congregation Shearith Israel, the United States’ oldest congregation. (It is not to be confused with the Beth Olam Cemetery in Hollywood, California, where Judy Garland is buried.)

Jewish cemeteries across the country have seen increased vandalism in recent years, driving a spike in nonviolent anti-Semitic incidents nationwide.

Beth Olam is one of several sprawling Jewish cemeteries in Queens’ “cemetery belt,” where some historic graveyards have become unkempt and, in some cases, abandoned by the congregations that are nominally responsible for them.

According to Shearith Israel’s site, American Jewish luminaries such as Emma Lazarus and Benjamin Cardozo are buried in Beth Olam.

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.