By KIM SMITH DEDAM
SARANAC LAKE — About 12 headstones in the Hebrew Memorial Cemetery, part of the historic Pine Ridge Cemetery in Saranac Lake, were vandalized over Memorial Day weekend.
Lionel Arlan, previous president of the Pine Ridge Cemetery, said Thursday that vandals “absolutely” targeted the Jewish section of the cemetery.
Such actions are considered hate crimes.
Arlan’s mother’s tombstone was one of those knocked over.
The vandalism was reported to Saranac Lake Village Police on Saturday by cemetery caretaker Mike Madden.
“I understand Mike Madden restored the headstones to an upright position,” Arlan said. “I think it was in the order of a dozen headstones (knocked over).”
Some of the memorials in Hebrew Memorial Cemetery are historic, including one stone placed by Lake Placid residents Dr. and Mrs. Bartholomew Ring that is dedicated to 25 of their relatives who died in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.
The Ring stone was among those vandalized.
“There is a mixture in that section of the cemetery, with some very old headstones,” Arlan said.
Somewhere between 15 and 20 years ago, a similar incident occurred, Arland said, when headstones were tipped over and broken throughout the entire cemetery.
Pine Ridge Cemetery was established on six acres of farmland once owned by the Moody family, the first settlers in Saranac Lake.
According to the Cemetery Association’s brief online history, Jacob Smith Moody, a fifer and soldier who fought in the Battle of Plattsburgh, was interred in the graveyard in 1862, along with a child of the first Moody family to live here.
The graveyard includes a section for parishioners of St. Bernard’s Catholic Church, one for Norwegian sailors who came to cure from tuberculosis in the 1940s and a special area for graves of T.B. doctors.
Saranac Lake Police are investigating the vandalism.
E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at:
kdedam@pressrepublican.com
