The Jewish cemetery of Humpolec is located in a forested park at the foot of the Orlik castle. The cemetery was founded in the early 18th century and later expanded to a benched slope. The oldest gravestones are found in the upper part of the cemetery. The burial ground is entered through a ceremonial hall; an annex to the hall built at a later point contained the so called “beyt taharah” - a shed in which the dead bodies were cleansed before burial – but only a fragment of its perimeter walls can still be seen. A washstand for ritual hand ablutions (kiyyor) once was located to the left of the cemetery entrance. In the northwest corner of the cemetery is a well. A pathway beginning at the entrance crosses the old part of the cemetery. From the path branch off two staircases leading to the lower, newer part of the burial ground. Approximately one thousand tombstones are found in the cemetery. Some of them are very precious Baroque or Classicist artifacts. The cemetery once served a wider area: the communities of Lipnice (Lipnitz), Kaliste (Kalisch), Senozaty, Zeliv (Seelau), Vez and Havlickuv Brod (former Nemecky Brod - Deutsch Brod). Buried here are several relatives of the composer Gustav Mahler, including his grandparents. Here lie also the grandfather and several uncles of the writer Franz Kafka, and his first student love from Zeliv. The voluntary burial society Hebrah Kaddisha looked after the sick and dying, organized funerals, and took care of the cemetery. The hearse was kept at a house near the cemetery.
The historic Jewish tombstones are remarkable for their symbols and ornaments (simplified floral motives, reduced scale architectural ornaments and other decorative elements) developed gradually from the Middle Ages, merging with elements from the successive artistic styles; their occurrence and character largely depends on the local customs. The sepulchral symbolism is represented above all by small reliefs sculptured in the upper portions of the tombstones. Most often these reliefs are the Star of David, a crown or symbols of the descendants of certain Jewish tribes (hands in blessing are found on the tombs of the Cohanites, a can and a basin on the gravestones of the Levites). Animal effigies symbolize the names of the deceased (lion, deer, fish, bear, wolf, fox). Frequent are vegetable motifs (grapes, palm trees, pine cones) or objects indicating the profession of the deceased (circumcision knife, physician's tweezers, book).
The last significant overhaul of the Jewish cemetery and heightening of its walls occurred in 1922; the last burial at this cemetery took place in 1942, three months before the deportation of the local Jews to Terezin (Theresienstadt). The deceased community member was accompanied on his last journey by his co-religionists who by then already had to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothes. After World War II, some tombstones were engraved with the names of Holocaust victims. Urns containing the ashes of those who had died abroad were installed in their resting places at the ancestral cemetery. The Jewish cemetery suffered its heaviest damage during World War II when the nearby school in Podhrad housed the Training Institute for Female German Teachers evacuated from the bombed German city of Hannover. The cemetery became the target of vandalistic attacks of the evacuees and trainees of a German air pilot school in Havlickuv Brod. After the war, many modern monuments made from valuable stone were stolen.
On the occasion of the international anthropology congresses named after Dr. A. Hrdlicka, the Jewish cemetery and the funeral hall were restored at the expense of the Municipality of Humpolec. Local school children cleared the area of the underbrush developing from airborne seeds of various woody plants. The Jewish cemetery is owned by the Jewish Community in Prague. It is maintained on its behalf by the join-stock company Matanah. A paid custodian takes good care of the cemetery.