TELČ JEWISH CEMETERY

At first, Jews were not allowed to bury their dead on the Telč estate and therefore used a remote forest later named Židovec (relating to the word Žid meaning Jew) near Velký Pěčín. Later they were buried south of the nearby village of Zadní Vydří. There are around 150 tombstones of Baroque and Classicist style, mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries, the oldest of which is from 1655. In the middle of the 19th century the site at Oslednice on the hill behind the town, where there are two hundred tombstones became the main cemetery. The hall at the entrance to the cemetery is now an art gallery. The cemetery's ceremonial hall then served as a prayer room for the Adventist Church in the 1960s and 1970s and was converted into an art studio and gallery in the 1990s.