Henry’s mother, Ethel, and her husband, Jack, operated a well-known, clothing store in Iroquois Falls and she explained the history behind the cemetery. She is one of two Jews remaining in town. “The Northern Chevra Kadesha Cemetery was established when some Jewish pioneers died in a canoeing accident. Morris Perkus and his son Ben were returning from Englehart station with three new immigrants from Europe when their boat was caught in a surprise current and took them over a waterfall. When the bodies were recovered some time later, they were interred in a section of farmer Simon Henerofsky's property. This property was deeded in 1910 to the Hebrew congregation in Englehart to be used as a cemetery.”
Henry described a head stone from 1908, “One of the first -- the cemetery was started when several Jews drowned while making their way up north by canoe. The Hebrew reads: "’Here lies Ben Tsion ben Nehemia ha-Kohen from Tiraspol, drowned in the river. Krugersdorf N[orthern] Ont[ario] 19 Sivan [18 June] and buried 1 Tammuz 5668 [30 June 1908], May his soul be bound up in the bonds of life’. Listing the dates of death and burial separately is unusual because Jewish law requires very rapid internment -- ideally the first day. The only reason to delay is if it would benefit the deceased (allowing more family to come to ceremony, for example, or in this case, purchasing a plot for burial).”
Despite high quality soil, frosts killed crops and markets for beef and grain were distant. After the Second World War, the Krugerdorf farming community really began to wind down as children left the farm for work in local towns. All that is left today is the cemetery, a testament to the settlers of a bygone era.
The small piece surrounded by hay fields would eventually serve the Jewish populations throughout northeastern Ontario including Sudbury and North Bay. Today, the cemetery is maintained by a smattering of Jewish residents remaining in northeastern Ontario and northwestern Quebec, bordered by mature aspen trees and a wrought iron fence.
Tiny Jewish populations in nearby Englehart and Cobalt also used this cemetery founded in 1908. Kirkland Lake’s Jewish population was about 125 Jewish families in the early 1930s. It boasted "a synagogue, a Hebrew school, a chevrah kadishah and, at one time, a kosher butcher and a Jewish men's softball team.” The synagogue was sold in 1971; its Ark is now in the chapel of Beth Tikvah Synagogue in Toronto."
Henry Abramson recalls. “As a child, I remember regular pilgrimages to the small Jewish cemetery at Krugersdorf, which covered an area roughly equivalent to that of a hockey rink. I remember in particular the unveiling of the headstone for my grandmother Polly (Pafke) in 1971, when two dozen or so Jews gathered from Cochrane to Timmins to pay respects at the slightly neglected ancestral burial ground. I vaguely remember that the old iron gate was locked, but I found a small footpath so we left the cars on the gravel road and carefully made our way through the brambles in our best clothes. There was a medium sized shed on the graveyard grounds, and after the unveiling, the last Jews of the north stood around and shared a small meal that consisted primarily of hard-boiled eggs.”