Eastern Europe -- Initiative to protect mass grave sites

Marker at the site of mass execution/mass grave in Kremenets, Ukraine. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A international initiative to mark, document and protect sites of Holocaust mass execution and burial is under way, and at a conference in Berlin this week groups taking part urged the German government to become involved.

The American Jewish Committee news release announcing this was not very clear about just what this was about, but one of the participants said that specifically, there is an initiative to persuade the German government through its war graves commission to pay for in general memorializing mass graves and in particular sealing the mass graves opened during research carried out by the French priest Patrick Desbois. Agence France Presse, in its article about the initiative, said Desbois's group Yahad-In Unum ("together" in Hebrew and Latin) already receives about 500,000 euros ($700,000) in funding each year from the German government.

Philip Carmel, the director of Lo-Tishkach, an organization tasked with documentive Jewish cemeteries and mass grave, took part in the conference. He told me that

“There is no better way to combat Holocaust denial and to learn the tragic lessons of the past than to physically mark the last reminders in all these thousands of towns and villages across eastern Europe that they all had living and vibrant Jewish communities and that they didn’t just disappear without reason. This in some way would mark an appropriate act of closure of our direct duty to the victims of the Holocaust.”

Here's the American Jewish Committee press release:

January 20, 2010 – Berlin – An international initiative spearheaded by AJC called today on the German government to join efforts to seal and memorialize mass graves in eastern Europe. The appeal came at a news conference hosted by AJC’s Lawrence and Lee Ramer Institute on German-Jewish Relations in Berlin.

“It is time to seal the graves.  It is time to commemorate the victims. It is time to rescue wherever possible the histories and memories of those whose lives were brutally extinguished,” said Deidre Berger, Director of AJC’s Berlin Office. She added that time is running out to solve the issue before the last witnesses and survivors die. The news conference took place one week before the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

A coalition of Jewish and non-Jewish NGO leaders outlined the incomplete level of information on Jewish mass gravesites, pointing to the lack of protection for thousands of sites in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. The difficulties of the local Jewish communities in addressing the issue were described by Rabbi Pinhas Goldschmidt, Chief Rabbi of Moscow, and Rabbi Yaacov Bleich, Chief Rabbi of Ukraine.

Rabbi Andrew Baker, AJC’s Director of International Jewish Affairs, urged the creation of a German government-led task force to survey the problem and create a comprehensive approach to seal, protect and memorialize the gravesites.

Participants at the news conference stressed the important work of Father Patrick Desbois, President of the Paris-based Yahad in Unum, in documenting the sites and bringing the issue into public focus in recent years. Father Desbois has collected testimony and documented more than 400 locations in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine where German death squads shot and killed primarily Jewish victims. Romas and Soviet communists also were victims.

Father Desbois said that a war does not end until all the dead are buried, calling it an imperative to bury the Jewish Holocaust victims in Europe. He added that it is difficult for Europeans to have credibility solving international conflicts if it can not find means to bury its own dead.

Stephan Kramer, Secretary General of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, underlined the importance of cross-national reconciliation and education in working on solutions for memorializing the mass gravesites.  In talks with Ukrainian government representatives, Kramer said they indicated a willingness to create the necessary legal framework to deal with the issue of mass graves.

The President of the German War Graves Commission, Reinhard Fuehrer, stressed the moral responsibility of Germany to address the issue of the neglected grave sites, indicating the commission will take a role if it is given funds and a mandate by the German government.

Phil Carmel, Executive Director of the Brussels-based Lo Tishkach, responsible for mapping Jewish cemeteries and grave sites in Europe, said it is urgent to address the issue before the remaining markers and clues are lost completely. The best protection against Holocaust denial, he said, is visible graves and gravesites.

At the news conference, support for the initiative also was voiced by Christian Kennedy, U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues; Jiri Cistecky, of the European Shoah Legacy Foundation; Kathrin Meyer, Executive Secretary of the International Holocaust Task Force on Education, Remembrance and Responsibility; and Paul Shapiro, Director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Ukraine -- New Report on Jewish Cemeteries in Kiev Region

Lo Tishkach, the international organization involved in documenting and preserving Jewish cemeteries, has just published a detailed report on the cemeteries and World War II Holocaust mass grave sites in the Kiev (Kyiv) region of Ukraine, which can be downloaded as a file.

This report on the Jewish burial grounds of Kyiv Region, or Oblast, is one of the results of a number of education and research projects undertaken by the Lo Tishkach Foundation in the spring and summer of 2009. It catalogues 52 Jewish cemeteries and 29 Holocaust-era mass graves. The publication, which can be downloaded HERE, also contains details of two mass graves dating from 1919, when many Ukrainian Jews were murdered in the wave of pogroms committed in the aftermath of the Russian revolution.

Thanks to the efforts of local partners and with the support of the Genesis Philanthropy Group, this material is now available for Kyiv Oblast, the area around Ukraine’s capital and its largest city. During the spring and summer months of 2009, 83 burial grounds in the Kyiv Region were located, visited, surveyed and photographed, creating a unique record of the region’s Jewish heritage.

The report gives the history of the cemetery and of the local Jewish community (in many cases destroyed in the Holocaust), as well as details of access, location and demarcation of the cemetery; graves, gravestones, memorial markers and structures; condition and threats.

Lo Tishkach surveys in the Kiev Oblast of Ukraine have shown that the following works are urgently required on the cemeteries listed below. 

Baryshivka Jewish Cemetery – Identification marker, fencing

Bohuslav Jewish Cemetery – Completion of fencing, vegetation clearance

Borodianka Jewish Cemetery – Fencing, reparation of broken monuments, vegetation clearance

Boryspil Jewish Cemetery – Identification marker

Brovary Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Byshiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker, restoration of remaining matzevot

Dymer Jewish Cemetery – Vegetation clearance, fencing, restoration of metal grave markers

Hermanivka Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, memorial plaque

Hnativka Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Hornostaypil Old Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Hornostaypil New Jewish Cemetery – Identification marker

Hostomel Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Hrebinky Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Kaharlyk Jewish Cemetery – Vegetation clearance, fencing

Kivshovata Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Kodra Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Kozyn Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Kyiv (Zvirynetske) Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Makariv Jewish Cemetery – Identification marker

Medvyn Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, vegetation clearance, identification marker

Obukhiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi Jewish Cemetery – Fencing

Piatyhory Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker, restoration of gravestones

Poliske Jewish Cemetery – Completion and restoration of fence, vegetation clearance

Rokytne Jewish Cemetery – Completion of cemetery wall

Rozhiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Rzhyschiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Skvyra Old Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Tetiiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Trypillia Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Vasylkiv Old Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Volodarka Old Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Volodarka New Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, identification marker

Voronkiv Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Yahotyn Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker, gravestone restoration

Yasnohorodka Jewish Cemetery – Delineation of cemetery boundaries, fencing, identification marker

Austria -- Government to Help Fund Jewish Cemetery Restoration

 Historic Jewish cemetery in Eisenstadt, Austria. Photo: Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Austrian government is mandating 20 million euro over the next 20 years toward the care and restoration of abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries in Austria. An agreement reached Monday night broke what Austrian Jewish leader Ariel Muzicant said had been a stalemate lasting nine years, following an agreement made in 2001 under which Austria had committed to care for Jewish cemeteries as part of a compensation deal for Nazi crimes.

Vienna's Jewish community called the government's 20 million euros (29 million dollars) a "late Hanukkah gift." "Nearly nine years after the signing of the Washington Agreement, the last issue that was still open in terms of international law is settled," the community said in a statement. Under the new funding agreement reached late on Monday, Jewish communities are to raise an additional 20 million euros, while the city of Vienna and the province of Lower Austria also pledged contributions.

          Read full DPA story

          Read Associated Press story

There are about 70 Jewish cemeteries in Austria, about 20 of which are said to be in particularly bad condition. The Austrian Jewish Community web site has an extensive page listing all the cemeteries and giving their history, size, location, condition and notes on any current or recent restoration efforts.

Romania/Hungary -- Getting Ready to Go to Radauti

Dohany St. Synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I’m in Budapest this weekend, getting ready to head off to Radauti, Romania (the ancestral village on my father's side of the family) on Sept. 1 to carry out the photographic documentation for my (Candle)sticks on Stone project on representing the woman in Jewish tombstone art.

The annual Summer Jewish Culture Festival in Budapest starts tomorrow, and I hope I can catch some of the events. There will be celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Dohany St. synagogue on Sept. 6, but I wont be able to attend because of the Romania trip. (They also are not listed, somehow, as part of the Festival...)

I also just found out that there will be some sort of ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the synagogue on Dozsa Gyorgy avenue -- designed by my hero, Lipot Baumhorn, built in 1908 and long used as a sports/fencing hall. But I so far have not been able to find out details...

A major part of the "Candlesticks" project is a photo documentation of the stones in the Radauti Jewish cemetery. (Alas, my good camera has broken, so I have to scramble to find a replacement...)

As I wrote for the web site I have set up for the project:

In Jewish tradition, Sabbath candles are a common, and potent, symbol on women’s tombs. That is because lighting the Sabbath candles is one of the three so-called “women’s commandments” carried out by female Jews: these also include observing the laws of Niddah separating men from women during their menstrual periods, and that of Challah, or burning a piece of dough when making bread.

The first time I saw a Jewish woman’s tombstone bearing a representation of candles was in 1978, when for the first time I visited Radauti, the small town in the far north of Romania near where my father’s parents were born. The tombstone in question was that of my great-grandmother, Ettel Gruber, who died in 1947 and in whose honor I received my middle name. Her gravestone is a very simple slab, with a five-branched menorah topping an epitaph.

Since then, and particularly over the past 20 years, I have visited scores if not hundreds of Jewish cemeteries in East-Central Europe, documenting them, photographing them, and writing about them in books and articles.

Carvings on Jewish tombstones include a wide range of symbols representing names, professions, personal attributes, or family lineage — as well as folk decoration. In northern Romania and parts of Poland and Ukraine in particular, cemeteries include a variety of wonderfully vivid motifs, and some stones still retain traces of the brightly colored painted decoration that once adorned them.

Candlesticks on women’s tombs are more or less a constant: sometimes they are very simple renditions, yet they can be extraordinarily vivid bas-relief sculptures. In some instances, broken candles represent death. And in some cemeteries, the carving is so distinctive that you can discern the hand of individual, if long forgotten, artists.

I won’t be going alone on the trip, as I had thought — three of my cousins are coming with me: Arthur, and Hugh and his son Asher. (I hope we all fit in the car!) So it will be a combination art trip and roots trip, with some family gossip and tourism thrown in. I look forward to re-visiting some of the painted monasteries in the region and also eating well...

In addition, as part of the trip — and also as part of the annual European Day of Jewish Culture — next weekend I’m to take part in two presentations of Simon Geissbuehler's new guidebook on Jewish cemeteries in the Bucovina region (now divided between Romania and Ukraine). One presentation is i Radauti, and the other, on Sunday, is in Chernivtsi — Czernowitz — Ukraine, just over the border.

Poland -- New Book by Tomasz Wisniewski

Tomasz Wiesniewski, Bialystok, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Tomasz Wisniewski, the long-time researcher on Jewish heritage in (particularly) northeastern Poland has published a new book on pre-World War II Jewish cemeteries. Called "The Lost World of Small-Town Jewish Cemeteries" and published by Istytut Wydawniczy Kreator, it will be officially launched at an event in Bialystok on Sunday.

Most of the book is in Polish, although some of the picture captions are also in English. Indeed, perhaps the main value of the book is to present these pictures, which Tomek has been collecting for many years. Many (if not all of them) can also be seen on his web site, bagnowka.com.

The pictures show extraordinary scenes of Jewish cemeteries all over what is now Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus -- when they were in use by the large and vibrant Jewish communities that once lived there. Many of the stones are painted -- the pictures are in black and white, but Tomek has also included reconstructions of what they may have looked like in color. (You can still find a few stones with traces of colorful decoration in, for example, northern Romania -- and tombstones in active Jewish cemeteries in, for example, Ukraine still occasionally are painted.)

Painted tombstone in Sharhorod, Ukraine, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The pictures also show Jewish grave-markers made out of wood (none of which survive today), as well as graves covered by wooden shelters. Almost none of these cemeteries remains today -- and for those who know Jewish cemeteries in this part of the world only as ravaged vestiges of the past, the scenes are a revelation.

Tomek asked me to write a Foreword for the book, and this is what I wrote:

Tomasz Wisniewski is a rescuer of Atlantis.

Like most of the postwar generation, he grew up in Bialystok with no inkling that his native city had once been an important center of Jewish life, learning and political and economic activity.

Born in the late 1950s, he was ignorant of the fact that Jews had made up the majority of Bialystok's pre-war population, that tens of thousands of Jews had been confined in the wartime Bialystok ghetto, that in 1941 the Nazis had herded some 1,000 Bialystok Jews into the city's main synagogue and then had torched the building.

Only three out of the more than 60 synagogues that had stood in Bialystok before World War II had survived the conflagration, and all were put to other use. The city's Jewish cemeteries had all been destroyed or swallowed up by encroaching forest.

Wisniewski discovered this history by chance in the early 1980s, when he read a book about the wartime Bialystok ghetto and the almost total annihilation of the Jewish population. The book changed his outlook about his town, his country and even his own local identity. "I wanted to know what there was before," he told me, "when Jews lived in Bialystok."

Since that moment more than 25 years ago, Wisniewski has devoted his life to documenting Jewish history both in Bialystok and in the surrounding region, where Jews had formed the majority of the population in numerous small towns, or shtetls. He felt he was discovering a lost world that had vanished from view and from public awareness as if it had been drowned like the mythical continent of Atlantis -- and indeed, "Postcards from Atlantis" was the title of a series of articles that he published in the local press.

Over the years, Wisniewski has become a recognized expert on the Jewish history and heritage of eastern Poland. He has published books and many articles, mounted exhibitions, and, more recently, set up a web site with an expanding database of historic and contemporary photographs of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and other heritage sites. In 1998 he became one of the first recipients of an annual award presented by the State of Israel to honor non-Jewish Poles who care for Jewish heritage in Poland.

This new book is based on the extensive photographic archives Wisniewski has collected over the past quarter century. For the first time, the pre-war state of Jewish cemeteries in the small shtetls scattered around the region is visually documented in dramatic detail: the exquisite carved imagery on the tombstones, or mazzevot, the surprising way many of them were painted in bright colors, the many striking grave markers made of wood, none of which survived the Shoah.

In the text that accompanies the pictures, Wisniewski tells stories of the pre-war past but also reflects on the savagery of destruction, both during and after World War II. Tombstones were smashed or uprooted and, as he documents, were used as paving stones, building foundations, and even as whetstone to sharpen knives. Recovering these fragments, too, is a means of rescuing memory and returning from oblivion.

Jewish Tombstones as Building Material -- This Time in the U.S...

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The photographer Ahron D. Weiner has discovered Jewish tombstones used to build an embankment for the Woodmere Club's golf course on Long Island.

In Tablet Magazine, where a slide show of his photographs is posted, Weiner said:

the club insists the stones—none of which seem to contain dates, only names and symbols—were extra granite, donated many years ago by long-dead club members.

If that is the case -- fine and good!

Still, I've documented and written about Jewish cemeteries and tombstones in eastern Europe for 20 years by now, and always one of the most disturbing sights is to find gravestones used as building material.

There are many examples -- back in November, I posted here about a planned exhibition on this topic.

Sometimes this type of misuse was done out of deliberate desecration -- as when the Nazis demolished cemeteries and used the tombstones to pave roads or line ditches and river beds, or as foundations for buildings...I vividly recall a farmer in the village of Krynki, in eastern Poland, prying away stones to show us how they were used as the foundation of what he said had been a pig sty....

Other times, however, Jews seem to have used the stones themselves.... there is a long retaining wall at the historic Jewish cemetery in Mikulov, Czech Republic, for example, that is composed of tombstones.

Mikulov. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Mikulov. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

In the past 25-30 years, it has become commonplace to use broken tombstones as a sort of mosaic memorial wall, to commemorate Holocaust victims.

There are many examples of this -- the most famous, perhaps, is in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Krakow and the large Holocaust memorial at the site of one of the Jewish cemeteries in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland.

Earlier this month, I photographed such a wall at the New Jewish Cemetery in Krakow:

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Poland --the power of a Jewish graveyard

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've written for years about the power and emotions evoked by Jewish cemeteries, particularly those in Eastern Europe.... Now Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband has felt the pull -- as he recounts in an article in the Jewish Chronicle. Miliband visited the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews project. Had he headed south, he could have felt perhaps even more palpable evidence of the endurance of the Jewish spirit (if not a sizable Jewish population) at the Festival of Jewish Culture (which I still expect to comment on here).

Visiting Poland gave me a poignant link to my roots - and hope for the future [...]

This was my first visit to Poland. There must have been a deep ambivalence at the heart of this delay. Poland is my roots. But Poland is the scene of terrible tragedy — mass murder on an unimaginable scale. This counterpoint — normality and tragedy, centuries of construction and a decade of destruction, heroism alongside sadism — is at the heart of the new Museum of Polish Jews that begins construction on June 30, on a site in the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto (www.shtetl.org.pl ).

The haunting void where once was the ghetto seems permanently wrestling with present and past —when I visited, dog walkers were to be found alongside an Israeli art group.

Romania/Ukraine -- The Bucovina Cemeteries Guidebook is Launched

Jewish cemeter, Gura Humorului, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Swiss Diplomat Simon Geissbuehler's guidebook to Jewish cemeteries in the Bucovina region straddling the Romania-Ukraine border was launched last week in Bucharest and has been getting appreciative reviews in the local media. The book is available in various languages.

'This work is a combination of a tourist guide and an art album and I'm speaking of the fact that the text written by Simon Geissbuhler is in the form of a traveller's journal, but the images in the album make one think the work is an art album', said Adrian Manafu, the editor of Noi Media Print publishing house that published the volume.

Manafu, moreover, believes the Jewish cemeteries in Bucovina can be deemed genuine works of art. He explained the work refers the cemeteries in historical Bucovina, an old Romanian territory that has been shared by Ukraine and Romania after World War Two.

Read full story

I was glad to see that an article in one of the local media highlighted the sorry fact that the wonderful Jewish cemeteries in Bucovina are woefully ignored. The journalist Annett Muller picks up my own contention that these cemeteries could form the basis of a fascinating artistic a spiritual tourism route -- and she points out how the famous "Merry Cemetery" in Sapanta, with its brightly painted grave markers, is a popular attraction, even if it is in a fairly remote location. Few people realize that there is also a Jewish cemetery in Sapanta, well maintained and well marked.

Jewish cemetery in Sapanta, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I wrote the Foreword to the book, and Simon kindly pointed out an article in the local media where this was highlighted.

I am hoping to get to Radauti at the end of the summer, when a launch of the book is scheduled to take place there -- at the same time, I'll be working on my photo documentation of the beautifully decorated tombs of women in the Jewish cemetery there, a project for which I received a grant from the Hadassah Brandeis Institute.

Romania -- New Guidebook News

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A Romanian web site (using my pictures....) is highlighting Simon Geissbuehler's new guide to Jewish cemeteries in the Bucovina, for which I wrote the Foreword. The launch of the book in Bucharest is this Friday.

Volumul intitulat „Cimitirele evreieşti din Bucovina” al diplomatului elveţian, dr. Simon Geissbühler, va fi lansat joi, 25 iunie a.c., ora 18.30, la IF Gallery din Str. Tokio nr. 1, Bucureşti. Publicată de editura „Noi Media Print”, cartea este disponibilă în română, germană, engleză, franceză şi ucraineană.

Vernisajul va cuprinde scurte alocuţiuni ale directorului editorial al editurii „Noi Media Print”, Adrian Manafu, ale preşedintelui Federaţiei Comunităţilor Evreieşti din România, dr. Aurel Vainer, şi ale autorului, deschiderea unei expoziţii de fotografie cu cimitirele evreieşti din Bucovina, cât şi un cocktail unde vor fi servite cele mai bune vinuri româneşti.

Celebra scriitoare, fotografă şi jurnalistă americană, Ruth Ellen Gruber, deţinătoare a două premii Simon Rockover pentru jurnalism iudaic, o autoritate în domeniul chestiunii evreieşti din Europa, a apreciat că “prin publicarea acestui ghid turistic Simon Geissbühler face un pas important, prezentând publicului larg o serie de localităţi minunate. Domnia sa deschide astfel, noi dimensiuni pelerinajului spiritual, adresându-se aparţinătorilor tuturor credinţelor şi orientărilor religioase, care doresc să intuiască nemijlocit frumuseţea, semnificaţia istorică şi vitalitatea cimitirelor evreieşti din Bucovina”.

La rândul său, preşedintele FCER, dr. Aurel Vainer, consideră că „această carte este şi trebuie să fie primul pas al autorului, la care ne alăturăm fără nici o rezervă, către un proces de cunoaştere şi recunoaştere a bogatei tradiţii culturale şi religioase evreieşti în sine şi ca parte din Patrimoniul Cultural Naţional”.

Romania/Ukraine -- New Guidebook Launch

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

"Jewish Cemeteries of the Bucovina," a new guidebook-brochure to Jewish cemeteries in the Bucovina region of Romania (and Ukraine) is being published this month. It was written (and photographed) by Simon Geissbühler, a Swiss diplomat based in Bucharest and will be available in English, German, French, Romanian, and Ukrainian.

The official launch is June 25 in Bucharest -- see the inviation above -- but there will be another launch in Radauti, on June 29.

I contributed the Foreword to this guide -- the cemeteries in this region, with their sculptural, wonderfully carved, tombstones have long been among my favorite Jewish heritage sites (and not just because the region is where my paternal grandparents came from.) My project (Candle)sticks on Stone focuses on these carved stones, particularly house women are represented on them by depictions of candlesticks.

Needless to say, I'm delighted to see this book come out, and I hope it attracts attention to these wonderful but overlooked places, which are located in the same region as Romania's splendid, and much more famous (and visited) painted monasteries.

Here's my Foreword:

A hand reaches out, grasps the branch of a tree and breaks it sharply off. The image is extraordinary, even surreal; so vivid that you can almost hear the crack of the wood.

The tree is the Tree of Life and the hand is the hand of God -- or maybe that of the Angel of Death. The portrayal, found repeated over and over in the Jewish cemetery in Radauti, in the Bucovina region of northern Romania, is one of the remarkable sculpted images found on Jewish tombstones in scores of Jewish cemeteries scattered over this part of East-Central Europe.

I first visited Radauti more than 30 years ago, in the bitterly cold December of 1978. It is the town from which my grandparents emigrated to the United States, and it is here, in the Jewish cemetery, that my great-grandmother Ettel Gruber lies buried.

Tilted now to one side, her tombstone is marked with the depiction of candlesticks that traditionally denote the tombs of Jewish women. Ettel, who died in 1947, was "a positive and dedicated woman, fair and kind in all her doing," her epitaph reads. She "offered hospitality and charity to the poor and set a full table for the Tzaddikim."

Jewish cemeteries are often described as "Houses of the Living," and, even when overgrown and abandoned, lives and life stories endure here in sculpted form.

Jewish tombstone decoration combines religious and folk motifs that in many cases refer to the name, lineage, profession or personal attributes of the deceased. Numerous gravestones bear symbols referring to death, such as broken candles and broken flowers as well as the hand of God breaking the branch from a tree. But many more refer to life.

Among the more common carved symbols are two hands in the spread-fingered gesture of priestly blessing on the gravestones of a Cohen (priest), that is, a descendant of the biblical High Priest Aaron. Another common symbol is a pitcher, or ewer, marking tombs of Levites, or descendants of the ancient tribe of Levi, priestly assistants who traditionally washed the hands of the priests.

Books mark the graves of particularly learned people; hands placing coins into charity boxes denote those who were particularly generous. Candlesticks -- as on my great-grandmother's gravestone -- often mark the tombstones of women, since in Jewish ritual women bless the candles on the Sabbath. The candlesticks are sometimes simple representations; others show ornate, almost braided candelabras, and some carvings include hands blessing the flames.

The images of a variety of animals also frequently decorate the stones. Lions may symbolize the tribe of Judah or personal names, such as Lev or Leib. Carved stags indicate names such as Zvi or Hirsch. Birds often appear, and mythical beasts, such as the winged griffin, are also common. There is often, too, a wealth of other decorative carving such as flowers, vines, grapes, and geometric forms.

All this imagery, and more, is found in the Jewish cemeteries of the Bucovina region. The decorated tombstones here, in fact, represent especially striking and sometimes startling examples of artistry, design and virtuoso stone-carving.

Baroque tombstones from the 18th and 19th centuries in particular employ a richness of texture and imagery that approaches that found in the rococo decoration in some churches. In some places carving styles are so distinctive that you can discern the work of individual, now anonymous, artists.

Few Jews live in the Bucovina today; the cemeteries thus form powerful memorials to a civilization that was wiped out in the Holocaust. Moreover, the liveliness and fantasy employed by the stone-masons adds a new dimension to how we may regard the spiritual, intellectual and artistic lives of Jews who lived in traditional East European shtetls.

To me, these elaborate sculpted gravestones are just as important manifestations of faith through art as are the marvelous painted monasteries that are also found in this region. Yet few people know of their existence, and even fewer ever visit.

With this important new guidebook, Simon Geissbühler introduces these wonderful places to a broader public and opens the way for spiritual pilgrims of all faiths and beliefs to experience their power, beauty and historical significance.

Ruth Ellen Gruber
Morruzze, Italy

Jewish War Memorials

In honor of Memorial Day in the United States, Sam Gruber has posted pictures on his blog of war memorials to Jewish soldiers who fell while fighting for their (varied) countries in Europe....

Like Sam, I, too, have long been intrigued by these memorials and the stories that they tell -- at least the stories that they hint at. When you see a memorial in a Jewish cemetery in Germany, honoring Jewish soldiers who died fighting for Germany in World War I, a conflict that ended just 20 years before Kristallnacht and the start of the Holocaust, it does make you think.

Last week, in Bielsko-Biala, Poland, I photographed the World War I memorial in the town's Jewish cemetery.

Bielsko-Biala, 2009. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Israeli political scientist Sholmo Avinieri, who was born in Bielsko-Biala and who has restored the tombs of his grandparents in the cemetery, told me that the list of names included those of three Muslims -- two Bosniak Austrian soldiers (Dedo Karahodic and Bego Turonowicz), and one Muslim Russian prisoner of war (Chabibulin Chatybarachman) who died in an adjacent POW camp. "Who would bury them if not the Jews?" Shlomo commented.

One of the most poignant such War Memorials is in the wonderful, and historic, Jewish cemetery in Mikulov, Czech Republic -- it was founded in the 15th century and has about 4,000 tombstones. The oldest legible dates from 1605.

The World War I memorial honors 25 Jewish soldiers. "Oh, how the heroes have been cut down!" it reads, in German. The names of the dead include Moriz Jung, Max Fedsberger, Heinrich Deutsch, Hans Kohn, Emil Spitzer...

Mikulov. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Mikulov. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Bratislava Seminar on Jewish Heritage -- Promotion, Preservation

Information at synagogue in Samorin, Slovakia, now an arts center. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Last week I attended an international seminar in Bratislava on strategies for the preservation, management and promotion of Jewish built heritage in (mainly) post-communist Europe.

In the past 10 or 15 years, many buildings -- including former synagogues -- have been restituted to Jewish communities in these countries. Some (most?) are in poor condition. What can/should be done with them? This was the core issue of what turned out to be a very intensive meeting that combined discussion with on-site visits.

Representatives of Jewish communities in about 15 countries attended, along with a group of experts (including myself). My brother, Sam Gruber, who is president of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments and also blogs on the subject, was one of the organizers and served as the chief moderator. The seminar was sponsored/organized by the JDC (Joint Distribution Committee), the Cahnman Foundation, the World Monuments Fund, the Rothschild Foundation, and Maros Borsky (who heads the Slovak Jewish Heritage Center).

The meeting touched on many aspects of the broad issue -- from Jewish law (Halacha) regarding synagogue buildings and cemeteries to fund raising to tourism promotion.

I will try to post several short reports, touching on specific aspects of what was discussed or emerged, rather than an overview.