Mount Zion Cemetery opened on Downey Road in East Los Angeles in August 1916, to serve the city's growing Jewish population in the Boyle Heights neighborhood. Mount Zion is adjacent to the Home of Peace Cemetery, which opened in 1902. The city's original Jewish cemetery opened in 1855, near the current site of Dodger Stadium, but reached its capacity in 1902.

Congregation B’nai B’rith -– now known as the Wilshire Boulevard Temple -– opened the Home of Peace Cemetery on a 35-acre site on Whittier Boulevard, and the remains buried in the original cemetery were moved there between 1902 to 1910.

A small section on the western edge of the Home of Peace Memorial Park along Downey Road was once a separate cemetery known as the Beth David Cemetery, and operated by a Sephardic congregation in Los Angeles. That cemetery became part of Home of Peace in the early 1960s. Home of Peace Memorial Park is still owned and operated by the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

Mount Zion Cemetery was founded in 1909 by Chevra Chesed Shel Emeth (Jewish Free Burial Society), for the purpose of providing "proper burial for orthodox Jews." Although the original intent might have been to provide free burials for indigent Jews in the seven-acre property, Mount Zion Cemetery had a much wider clientele -- most of the estimated 7,000 grave markers in the cemetery are large and ornate, and would cost tens of thousands of dollars to duplicate today.

The graves at Mount Zion include 1st Lt. Julius Butow, an Air Force pilot who was shot down during World War II ("blown to pieces in flame at the age of 26," according to his ornate grave marker), and his parents, Russian immigrants Frank and Dora Butow; Yiddish-American writer Lamed Shapiro; and two of the young victims of the Hope Development School fire in 1924.

By the middle of the 20th century, the Jewish population had moved out of the Boyle Heights area -- which had been the largest Jewish community in the country outside of New York City -- and the need and support for a cemetery like Mount Zion began to fade. In June 1969, Chevra Chesed Shel Emeth sent a letter to the Jewish Federation, a philanthropic nonprofit group, saying that it would no longer be able to take care of Mount Zion Cemetery.

A property title search showed that the cemetery was owned by the Masonic Cemetery Association, but that corporation no longer exists.

The Jewish Federation took unofficial responsibility for the cemetery, paying about $1,000 per month to Home of Peace to perform basic maintenance -- although the question remains as to who legally owns the cemetery property. But basic maintenance wasn't enough to take care of the deteriorating property. The Federation spends another $13,000 per year on various special projects at the cemetery, including the recent removal of rat-infested trees.

In 1987, the Whittier Narrows earthquake did significant damage to the cemetery. Four years later, the Jewish Federation sent a letter to all known living relatives of the people buried at Mount Zion, and discovered that most were elderly and living on fixed incomes, and the rest were deceased.

"I don't know what happens when no one owns a cemetery," Jewish Federation President and CEO Jay Sanderson told the L.A. Times. "I don't know what you do with a cemetery like that."

Even worse than the earthquake damage, Mount Zion has also been targeted by vandals, who have pushed over more than 300 huge grave markers, scrawled graffifi, and smashed enamel portraits on grave markers. Many of the fallen grave markers have crushed and broken the concrete ledgers over the graves. Some of the ledgers can be repaired, but many need to be replaced. And about half of the estimated 7,000 grave markers on the property need to be remounted and secured to prevent them from falling over.

In March 2013, a story about the condition of the cemetery in the L.A. Times caught the attention of the city's Jewish community. Rabbi Moshe Greenwald, co-director of the Chabad of Downtown Los Angeles, helped launch an effort to repair and restore Mount Zion Cemetery. Community leaders, business owners, real estate developers and even the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles offered to help.

Entrepreneur and philantropist Shlomo Rechnitz heard about the situation at Mount Zion, and took a tour of the cemetery in late May 2013. About half-way through the tour, he stopped. "I've seen enough," he said. "This is just depressing me." Rechnitz wrote a check on the spot for $250,000 to help repair the property.

Rechnitz gave the check to Greenwald, but with one important condition -- "The work has to start right away," he said. "In Jewish law, honoring the dead precedes other commandments. It is the most important commandment. The thought of having to wait here just doesn't work."

"The situation there is nothing short of deplorable," Rechnitz told the Jewish Journal. "We live in a city that features and showcases so many beautiful, lavish, prestigious homes, and when it comes to our dead, we are centuries behind Europe. ... When I look at headstones being smashed and graffiti and bullet holes, and a lot of spaces where you could literally see into the grave, it was scary."

Greenwald estimates that about $700,000 will be needed to properly repair and restore the cemetery. The first step will be repairing the fence around the property to keep out the vandals. Ongoing repairs, maintenance and security could cost an estimated $30,000 to $40,000 per year, Greenwald said.

"In Jewish tradition, a cemetery is called a beit hachaim, which means a house of life," Greenwald told the Times. "A cemetery is sacred ground. And as a rabbi and a Jew and a human bring, I could not in good conscience turn away from such a travesty and devestation. These were people's mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children, and they deserve better."

"It's a community dilemma, and it should be a community solution," Greenwald said.

The goal is to have the cemetery repaired and renovated by 2015 -- just in time for its 100th anniversary.

If you want to help, send your tax-deductible contributions to Chabad of Downtown Los Angeles -- Mount Zion Restoration Project, 219 W. Seventh St., Los Angeles, CA 90014. Checks should be made out to "Friends of Mount Zion Cemetery." Or contact Rabbi Moshe Greenwald at rabbi@downtownJCC.com.

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