According to the decree of Emperor Alexander I, from 1802, people of the Jewish faith were buried in specially designated sections of the Smolensk and Volkovo cemeteries, with a prayer house for funeral services located at the Volkovo Lutheran cemetery. Finally, in 1871, a highest order was issued for the establishment of a new cemetery at the city's expense — the Preobrazhensky Cemetery. In 1872, the Commission for the Arrangement of Suburban Cemeteries acquired a plot near the Obukhovo station of the Nikolaev Railway. To the left of the road (on the northeast side) — for non-Orthodox burials, to the right (on the southwest side) — for Orthodox burials. Adjacent to the Jewish section, closer to the railway, were plots designated for Evangelical Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Muslim, and Karaite burials.
On February 16, 1875, approximately 12 kilometers south of the OPZ, on the other bank of the Neva River, a grand opening of the Jewish Cemetery took place with a large gathering of people. It was founded as a separate section of the Preobrazhensky Cemetery (now the Cemetery in Memory of the Victims of January 9) and later became independent. Regular burials at the newly opened cemetery began only two weeks later. The reason was that, according to ancient Jewish tradition, a person is not buried alone if no one has yet been buried in that place. Judaism forbids condemning the soul of the deceased to loneliness in the afterlife. To properly "launch" the cemetery, two people had to be buried at once, but such a case had not yet occurred. However, as you might have guessed, the wait was not long.
On February 28, 1875, an explosion occurred at the Okhta Gunpowder Plant, claiming the lives of Jews Berka Burak and Moshka Frisno. They were buried in a single grave, which became the first at the Jewish Cemetery in St. Petersburg. This double burial has been preserved to this day. It is located quite close to the prayer house (the House of Washing and Funeral Services). On a modest sandstone stele, designed in the form of tablets, the following is inscribed in two languages: “Berka Burak. Moshka Frisno. Laboratory workers of the Okhta Gunpowder Plant, 23 years old. Died in the laboratory explosion on February 28, 15 Adar, and buried in the cemetery on March 2, 1875.”
Surprisingly, the explosion that took the lives of these young men is not mentioned in the list of gunpowder explosions from 1816 to 1890 contained in the “Historical Description of the Okhta Gunpowder Plant” by K. I. Kamenev. (The year 1875, which forever linked the enterprise with the Jewish Cemetery, does not appear in this list at all.) We can only speculate about the reasons for the absence of information about this tragic event. Unfortunately, we also know nothing about the deceased gunpowder workers themselves.
Sources:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Еврейское_кладбище_(Санкт-Петербург)
