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The beginning of virtually every organized Jewish community
in America (as previously in Europe) has been marked by the
acquisition of a cemetery. And so it was in Kansas City. The
fewer than a dozen first pioneer families joined hands in
1866, one year after the close of the Civil War, and purchased
two-thirds of an acre along the north side of 18th Street
at Lydia as a burial ground in the name of the "Kansas
City Hebrew Benevolent Society." That cemetery was ceded
to Congregation B'nai Jehudah soon after its establishment
in 1870. Two years later, when the 18th Street site was being
crowded by the expanding city, B'nai Jehudah purchased two
acres in the southwest corner of the 40-acre Elmwood Cemetery,
fronting on 15th Street (now Truman Road), and transferred
thirty-seven remains there from the original burial ground.
During the ensuing ten years, B'nai Jehudah's portion of Elmwood
provided all interments for Kansas City's Jewish dead.
In 1919, after nearly two thousand burials in B'nai Jehudah's
section of Elmwood dictated the need for an additional cemetery,
the congregation purchased ten acres of farm land on the far
southern outskirts of the city-the present Rose Hill. The
ground is said to have been a battle site during the Civil
War. The last action in the 1864 Battle of Westport is known
to have been fought in the general area. It involved a rear
guard of Confederates who were covering the retreat of the
main body against a pursuing Union detachment. The Confederate
soldiers killed in this action were buried in what later became
Forest Hill Cemetery, on the east side of Troost Avenue, opposite
Rose Hill.
Only the ten acres purchased in 1919 have ever been platted
for cemetery purposes. The land to the north, sold to the
Helzberg Foundation, was acquired by the congregation in two
separate parts: The ground to the immediate north was purchased
in the 1930s for the caretaker's house and tool sheds; ground
still farther north (towards 68th Street) was purchased in
1959 for a possible future extension of the temple's parking
lot.
The purchase price and development cost for Rose Hill were
met through the issuance of $35,000 in 5% Gold Bonds, sold
to Temple members and repayable by 1940, but not fully retired
until 1952 due to adverse conditions during the Depression
years. The first interment, in 1921, was that of Joseph Liebman,
one of B'nai Jehudah's sons lost in World War I. More than
five hundred, including a military honor guard, accompanied
the funeral cortege as it proceeded from the Linwood Boulevard
Temple to the new cemetery. The granite monument that was
placed on Private Liebman's grave is the only one of its kind
in Rose Hill. All other graves there are identified by simple,
uniform bronze markers.
As of January 2005, there have been 2,953 burials in Rose
Hill Cemetery since it was opened 81 years ago. Among them
are two members of B'nai Jehudah who deserve to be singled
out for the unique services they performed:
Eddie Jacobson (died 1955), whose lifelong friendship with
President Harry S. Truman enabled him to exercise a sustained,
extraordinary influence for more than four years as an unofficial
White House adviser on Israel.
Esther Brown (died 1970), who initiated the landmark school-desegregation
case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, and who organized
the nationwide "Panels of American Women"-a potent
antidote to racial and religious prejudice.
Rose Hill Mausoleum, completed in 1932 at a cost of $250,000,
was built and initially managed by a privately organized company
composed of B'nai Jehudah members-for the most part prominent
downtown Kansas City merchants, including Herbert Woolf (company
president), Siegmund Harzfeld, Michael Katz, Gustav and Jerome
Bernheimer, Henry Auerbach, and Isidor Adler. The company
had intended to sell crypts at a profit for ten years and
then turn the unsold ones over to the congregation with a
trust fund sufficient to maintain the mausoleum in perpetuity.
But because of lagging sales during the Depression, the private
company could not even complete payments to the contractor
and was bailed out by the congregation in 1941.
Among those laid to rest in Rose Hill Mausoleum are two of
B'nai Jehudah's senior rabbis: Samuel S. Mayerberg (died 1964)
and William B. Silverman (died 2001).
The Board of Trustees and the Cemetery Committee oversee the
continued upkeep and maintenance of Rose Hill. The maintenance
is financed by the income from a Perpetual Care Trust Fund,
which itself is funded from a portion of the proceeds of sales
of burial plots.
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