Levi Yitzhak's mausoleum is in Berdychiv's eerie, overgrown Jewish Cemetery. While the mausoleum itself has been looked after, several-hundred odd boot-shaped tombstones lie hideously askew and virtually hidden by weeds, neglected almost to the point of disbelief. Many tombstones, etched with barely legible Hebrew inscriptions, lie flat on the ground.The graves predate the Nazis by at least several decades, but it was the Nazis who sealed the cemetery's fate by leaving no Jews behind to care for it.
A walk through the cemetery is moving and awe-inspiring. The effect is magnified by the solitude of the place. Despite its sorry state, it has fared better than the many Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine that have been buried and lost forever. It is thus a symbol of defiance and a powerful, important and rare reminder of the country's rich pre-Holocaust Jewish past.
The cemetery is about 15 minutes' walk north of Berdychiv's town centre just beyond where a set of railway lines cross the main road to Zhytomyr. The entrance is across from a petrol station.
