A Brooklyn family was devastated to find their long-dead father lying next to a stranger at Washington Cemetery—in the same plot their mother purchased years ago for her future resting place.

Klara Tranis, 84, spent $3,200 on side-by-side plots in Section 5 of the city’s largest Jewish cemetery in Midwood back in 1987, when her beloved husband of 42 years, Wolf Tranis, died at 59.

The couple had two daughters, and came to America in 1978 where Wolf, a businessman, and Klara, a housewife, settled in Midwood.

The family visited Wolf’s grave regularly and as space at the cemetery dwindled, Klara’s plot looked like a tiny island of open grass in a sea of headstones.

Until last year, when a relative visited the grave and made a disturbing discovery, said daughter Ludmila Kushnir.

“She said, ‘I think your father’s got a girlfriend,’ ” Kushnir recalled.

Confused, Kushnir and her sister rushed to the cemetery to find a woman named Nina Kholodenko buried in the plot meant for their mom.

The cemetery denied responsibility for the grave error, claiming the plots are managed by various Jewish burial societies. Immigrants formed the societies decades ago, buying up plots and administering them for members.

“The black market in these graves is tremendous,” a government source told The Post. “It never stops.”

The family asked the cemetery to exhume Kholodenko, a 63-year-old Sheepshead Bay breast-cancer victim, and return the plot. Instead, said family lawyer Eric Rothstein, the cemetery offered only to dig up Wolf and move him.

Kushnir and her family last week sued the cemetery, as well as the funeral home, I.J. Morris, of Brooklyn, and the society that originally sold the plots.

A relative of Kholodenko claimed they bought the space from a woman who had originally bought it for herself and that the funeral home found no record of another owner.

(Source: NY Post)