A Jewish cemetery in Aurora receives National Historic Site designation
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AURORA, Colo — This month, Mount Nebo Memorial Park and Cemetery received designation as a National Historic Site. The Aurora cemetery serves as a time capsule to the Jewish communities in Colorado’s Front Range dating back to the late 1800s.
Many tombstones at the cemetery, founded in 1898 and incorporated in 1904, tell a story of the city’s Jewish past, detailing the contributions of the Jewish community, including businessmen, artists and community leaders.
“The designation protects the cemetery’s future. You just can’t dig this place up and build apartments here, ever,” said Jay Siegal, the administrator of the nonprofit Jewish cemetery. “Colorado protects its cemeteries, but now it is protected as a historic site as well.”
Early Jewish immigrants arrived in Denver in 1859, the earliest parts of Denver’s history. They arrived primarily from Germany and Central Europe, seeking economic freedom and an escape from persecution, according to the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society. Starting in the 1880s, a large influx of Eastern European Jewish immigrants followed.
“For years, there was a major division between those living west of the Platte River, especially along a West Colfax Corridor, the orthodox Russian Jews, and those living on Curtis Park Capitol Hill, sort of the more affluent middle class reform German Jews,” said Phil Goodstein, a local historian of Denver’s early Jewish communities. “That division started disappearing after World War II by the 1970s.”
Many figures who shaped Denver’s early years rest there today, including A.B. Hirschfeld, Dave Cook and Elizabeth Yanish.
Lisa Zinn, a Denver resident whose maternal great grandparents are buried at Mount Nebo cemetery, along with some other family members, visits the cemetery yearly. Zinn’s great grandparents left Russia with pilgrims and wound up in Palestine. They ultimately arrived in Denver in the late 1800s, Zinn said. Her grandmother was born in Denver in 1905.
“The Jewish community has certainly been a very integral part of Denver. Growing up here, there were more than 40,000 Jews here,” Zinn said, referring to the 1970s. “Sadly, there always has been antisemitism. It ebbs and flows. I know my mother had told me stories that the KKK used to meet out in Golden… an old stone bar that’s still around today… that used to be the meeting place for them in the late ‘50s or early ‘60s.”
An interactive map by History Colorado shows 1920s Denver had a significant presence of the Ku Klux Klan members and a handful of Klan members had connections to major local institutions in the city.
“The Klan had a lot of power in Denver in the late 1920s,” Siegal said. “My grandfather was working at a bottling company then, and the Klan said, ‘you got to get rid of that Jew boy.’ The guy my grandfather was working for said, ‘Ben, I have to let you go, but here I’m going to give you some money, start your own company.’”
Ben Siegal went on to found Siegel Oil Company, which started as a small gas station in 1927 and expanded into a petroleum marketing company that ran for three generations until it was bought out by Massachusetts‑based company Diesel Direct in 2017.
Dave Cook, who rests at Mount Nebo Cemetery, was another Colorado entrepreneur who left a mark. He started Colorado’s first sporting goods company with his brother Max, later known as Cook Sporting Goods. In 1932, he bought out Max’s shares and in 1936 opened the downtown flagship store at 16th and Larimer, known for its wide selection of sports gear.
Nearby, an abstract sculpture beside a tombstone belongs to artist Elizabeth Yanish, who contributed many pieces of art to the BMH-BJ synagogue, which is over 125 years old.
The cemetery has a children’s section. Most of the headstones date to the early 1900s, when the lack of modern medicine and the spread of infectious diseases resulted in higher child mortality rates.
The cemetery has a children’s section. Most of the headstones date to the early 1900s, when the lack of modern medicine and the spread of infectious diseases resulted in higher child mortality rates.
“Over history, a lot of the time, the families were poor and there’s barely a marker for their babies, so we’ve raised money to replace barely legible handmade little stones with standardized markers,” Siegal said.
As he walks along the paths, Siegal says they’re very cognizant about security at the cemetery, especially when there’s a big crowd for a funeral.
Earlier this month, two gunmen killed 15 people during a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Australia.
“Antisemitism is the socialism of fools… it's a practice of fools that think that somehow, by shooting a few Jews in Australia, that's going to change the nature of the Israeli government. This is just going to go and generate more parochialism, more hatred, more division,” said Goodstein.
He added that the bigger issue is the deeper questions about Jewish identity. Reflecting on Jewish people, especially those in the third, fourth, and fifth generations, he wonders whether they see their Jewish identity as a religion, a culture, an ethnic group, or as Zionism, noting that some try to assimilate and do not belong to a synagogue or practice Jewish religious rites.
“Has Zionism actually been a poison in terms of destroying a lot of Jewish traditions, a lot of Jewish identity where there has been this narrow identification with Israel, and often those that most embrace Israel tend to be extremely ignorant,” Goldstein said.
Type of story: News
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Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.