A Queen under Another Name

Beneath a magnificent marble gravestone marked with three stars in the middle field and lions in the others lies Anna, or Hendel Šmiles, who died in 1628. That name, however, is said to be false and to have been put there only so that the rest of the Polish queen who lies there should not be disturbed. Her husband is said to have cast her off, and she fled from Poland to Bohemia, where the Jews willingly received her among them because she had the right to strike her own coin. Before her death she went over to the Jewish faith so that she might be buried in this cemetery — for the earth itself would not bear the body of a gentile or of an apostate. Ruth himself remarks that legend made a queen of her because her husband Bassevi was raised to the nobility by Ferdinand II.