In the Italian city of Ferrara’s Sephardi cemetery, many graves conspicuously lack headstones. Fortunately for historians, the record book of the local “Sephardi and Levantine Synagogue”—which was responsible for this particular cemetery—contains a defense offered on behalf of a member of the community who was accused of stealing and then selling the headstones in the early 18th century. Antonio Spagnuolo notes a recent discovery that sheds some additional light on the matter:
In 1472, a column supporting the statue of an enthroned Duke Borso was placed on the left side of the entrance of the ducal court of Ferrara. . . . On December 23, 1716, a fire broke out in the surrounding shops and the column suffered serious damage. In 1718, sources attest that, in order to restore it, the city authorities ordered many marble burial headstones to be removed from the Jewish cemeteries and provided payment [for them] to the [Jewish] ghetto’s caretaker. . . .
It was only in 1960, during a restoration of the Borso column, that a photographer successfully captured fragments of Hebrew writing embedded in the structure. The photographs show 36 fragments of tombstones in which Hebrew characters, noble coats of arms, and elegant floral decorations are visible. The dating of the stone material shows they come from a chronological period between 1557 and 1680. It is very difficult, especially due to the loss of the auditing book of 1707 and the often-conflicting documentary sources, to establish with certainty if the tombstones were indeed deliberately sold by the Jewish community or if, as was often known to happen, they were forcibly removed or taken under special municipal injunctions.
Read more on The Librarians: http://blog.nli.org.il/en/cemetery_ferrara/