(Illustration)
Photo: Tal Shahar
Smartphones guide visitors at Berlin Jewish cemeteries
German capital offers 'electronic tours' to visitors of historical 17th, 19th centuries Jewish graveyards, including short bios of the deceased
Visitors to Berlin's Jewish cemeteries can now use their smartphones to make an 'electronic tour' that provides information about people buried there.
The German capital counts three historical Jewish cemeteries dating back to the 17th and the 19th centuries that survived the damage and desecration of the Nazi era. They have undergone large-scale renovation work in recent years.
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"There is an Internet code at the entrance of each cemetery which can be scanned by a smartphone and directly connects to the cemeteries' website," the cemeteries' inspector Hilel Goldmann said.
The Internet program is steered by a GPS navigation device and enables the visitors to plan their own 'tour' choosing among about 160 of the 150,000 graves in the three Berlin cemeteries, Goldmann said.
One of them, the Weissensee Cemetery, located in the eponymous northern neighborhood of the city, is still in use. It is the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe by area and hopes to join the UNESCO World Heritage list.
