Poland -- Piotrkow Trybunalski cemetery photos

I have posted a photo gallery of images of the Jewish cemetery in the Polish town of Piotrkow Trybunalski on the web site of my (Candle)sticks on Stone project. They show women's tombstones and a variety of candlestick images, including broken candles, as well as mythical animals and other imagery and iconography.

Bosnia -- Jewish cemetery in Zenica

If people know anything about the Jewish history and sites of Bosnia-Hercegovina, it is about Sarajevo, where there is a wealth of fascinating attractions.

Here is link to a collection of photos I have run across about the Jewish cemetery in Zenica, a town in the center of the country, northwest of Sarajevo, which has been cleaned up.

Poland -- old Jewish cemetery in Przemysl returned to Jewish ownership

An article in the Jerusalem Post on the return of a descrated, centuries-old Jewish cemetery to Jewish ownership. Nothing remains visible at the site except the broken frame of a gate.

The cemetery, located in the city of Przemysl, near Poland's border with the Ukraine, dates back to the 16th century and served local Jews, as well as those in nearby towns such as Jaroslav, Pruchnik, Kanczuga and Dynow, for hundreds of years.

But the Przemysl municipality, which took over the site following the end of World War II, resisted calls to return it.

At a meeting last week, however, Poland's government-backed Regulatory Commission, which resolves claims regarding Jewish communal property, instructed city officials to turn the cemetery over to Jewish control.

The decision marks a triumph for the Warsaw-based Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, and especially for its president, Monika Krawczyk, who led the effort in recent years to recover the graveyard.

Poland -- Fascinating article on epitaphs in Bialystok Jewish Cemetery

Tomasz Wiesniewski opens the gate to the Bagnowka Jewish cemetery in Bialystok, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

The online "Jewish Magazine" publishes a fascinating article by the scholar Heidi M. Szpek about the epitaphs in the Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery in Bialystok, Poland.

Called "In the Bloodshed of Their Days," it explores how tombstone epitaphs provide a vivid picture of the people buried there, and thus shed light on the life of the community -- both the good times and the bad.

As I translated each of this cemetery's inscriptions, I read of the character and qualities of the Bialystoker Jews, of "perfect and upright men" and "modest and God-fearing women". On their tombstones are also words of praise for great rabbis, scholars, and charitable women. Old age is recorded as a triumph, especially in the case of an Abraham son of Israel who lived to be 102 years old. What history Abraham must have seen and experienced from 1830 to 1932, the century and more of his life! (Image 2) Occasionally, the lesser qualities of the deceased are remembered, as one father wrote of his daughter: "Her mouth ceased from (its) evil tongue" – she gossiped! 

These inscriptions also hold details that were sadly normal to life in a world a century ago in Bialystok, Poland. Inscriptions remember women who died in childbirth, especially in the cold winter months, women who died before they could marry, and a man who barely experienced the joy of fatherhood before his untimely death. And then there are the tombstones of children. Perhaps the most heart wrenching inscription is that of three sons – Chaim Lejb, Shalom Shechna and Israel Abraham, aged eight, six and four, who died in a fire in March of 1908! How did their father, Asher, and their mother endure this loss? Such deaths, though sad, are not unique to Bialystok; they were part of life without the comforts of the contemporary world.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Szpek, a Professor of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Central Washington University (Ellensburg, Washington), is currently writing a book on the Jewish epitaphs from Bialystok. She spent three years translating all the epitaphs in the Bagnowka cemetery, the only Jewish cemetery to remain in Bialystok. Over the years she has worked with Tomasz Wisniewski, who has dedicated the past quarter century to documenting Jewish heritage in eastern Poland and who has been my own guide to Bialystok.

In Bialystok, Poland's Jewish cemetery on Wschodnia Street, the black Memorial Pillar that stands at its center is a blatant visual reminder of hatred vented in the past. The nearly 50 tombstone inscriptions that speak of "the bloodshed of the days" also bear subtle witness to Jewish persecution in the years 1905 onward. But of what value is this knowledge? The answer no doubt depends on the individual. For some people these tombstones might bring awareness that this entire cemetery - not just the tall, black Memorial Pillar – is a memorial to the "bloodshed of the days" in Bialystok's past. For others the knowledge imparted by these inscriptions fosters remembrance of the very personal world of Bialystok Jewry, a world at times gentle and loving, a world at times sad and violent. But for me, in particular, these horrific phrases, combined with a woman's name, a father's name, a child's name, with words of love mixed with words of grief, and a date, remind me of specific incidents in Bialystok's past. Together all these words also remind me that I am not simply translating words cut into stone. Rather as I translate I feel – if only for a moment – a touch of the anguish experienced by those of Bialystok's now 'lost' Jewish community, those perceived as 'the other' by past generations of Russians, Poles and Germans. In this brief moment of my anguish, an indissoluble desire is implanted in my mind and engraved on the tablets of my heart - that past hatred may not bequeath to us a future legacy of hatred and anguish. 

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The memorial to the 1905 pogrom, Bialystok cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Ukraine -- Report on Cemetery Clean up and exhibit at Sniatyn

More on Ukraine -- Check Sam Gruber's blog for a long post and photographs about an "archeology of memory" project this past  summer organized by the Center for Urban History in L'viv to clean up the Jewish cemetery in Sniatyn, rescue tombstones that were used to pave a courtyard, and stage an exhibition.

The Center's web site reports:

The goal of the project was to return the attention of the inhabitants of Sniatyn to the multi-national and multi-religious heritage of their city with the help of the two week program of a volunteer camp made up of youth from Ukraine, Poland and Germany. The program included fixing up and recording the architectural cemetery ensembles of the city. Concurrently the camp become an opportunity for participants of the volunteer group to become acquainted with the heritage, as well as contemporary life of Sniatyn. The work of the volunteers focused on two cemeteries in Sniatyn - Jewish and Christian, which are found not far from one another. The Christian cemetery is still used as a place of ritual events. The Jewish cemetery is in a state of neglect and ruin, and gravestones are being destroyed by spreading tree roots. Both cemeteries are monuments to the culture and history of the city, witnesses of the life and death of Sniatyn’s past inhabitants.

 Nineteen young people took part in in the two week project at the end of July and beginning fo August.

The project was realized by the Centre for Urban History within the framework of the program "Memoria", which was initiated by the foundation "Memory, responsibility and future" and was led together with the Stefan Batory Foundation. The goal of the program is to inspire young people to look for traces of shared culture and history in the border territory. The geographical focus of the program is Central and Eastern Europe, where for centuries people from different cultures, religions and languages co-existed. The Second World War and the Holocaust, deportations and changing borders after 1945 almost completely destroyed the diversity of these territories.  That is why, within the framework of the "Memoria" program, events are organized with the participation of young volunteers from Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Russia, Belorus and Ukraine, which are aimed at the preservation of historical monuments, acquaintance with different aspects of border area history and culture and formation of contacts with the inhabitants of these populated points, where the camps take place. 

Lithuania -- More on Kalvarija Cemetery Project

More information has been posted about Ralph Salinger's project to record the information on the tombstones in the Jewish cemetery in Kalvarija, Lithuania. You can find it by clicking HERE.

Romania -- Jewish cemetery in Gura Humorului

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've begun to post some YouTube videos of Jewish cemeteries in northern Romania that I am documenting for my (Candle)sticks on Stone project, which examines the way that women are represented in Jewish tombstone art.

The first video is of the cemetery in Gura Humorului, a little town in the heart of the painted monastery country -- two wonderful medieval monasteries, Humor and Voronets, are nearby. To me, the beautiful Jewish tombstones are in perfect harmony with the wonderful paintings on the monastery walls: touriststs visit the monasteries, however, and few people set foot in the cemetery.

Romania -- Botosani

Botosani. Entrance to old Jewish cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A few months ago, I posted on the desecration of tombstones at the Jewish cemetery in Botosani, Romania. I visited the cemetery last week as part of my (Candle)sticks on Stone project to document the representation of women in Jewish tombstone art in northern Romania's Bucovina region.

The cemetery is vast, and though the newest section is well maintained (and still used by the small Jewish community) the rest of the cemetery is almost inpenetrable.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

It is in the newer section of the cemetery, just on the edge of the overgrown part, that the vandalism took place: a number of smashed and toppled stones still lie there.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I had wanted to go back to Botosani because I had been so impressed by the distinctive carvings on the (men's) tombstones I had seen three years ago -- vigorous lions, stags and other animals carved in a style that was almost reminiscent of art deco! I had seen a number of these stones in a clearing, down a path from the newer section, and I wanted to see if the same artist/stone mason had also carved candlesticks on women's stones.

This time I found the path, but in three years, weeds, brush, bushes and even saplings have grown up, once again hiding many of the stones that had so impressed me and making it very difficult to take pictures!

Botosani. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I did discover some extremely beautiful and evocative candlesticks -- quite different from those in other towns. But it was so dark and so overgrown that I didn't manage to get the images I had hoped for...Still...

Botosani. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Romania -- More Family History Discovery Travel

At the tomb of my great-great grandmother (my Grandma Becky's grandmother) Chaya Dvoira Herer Halpern, in the Radauti Jewish cemetery. She died Feb. 22, 1905 at the age of 69)

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

My cousins all left, but I have stayed in Radauti for a couple more days, continuing my photo documentation for my (Candle)sticks on Stone project -- and also carrying out some more family history research -- and making discoveries, some of them even rather surprising: the grave of my great-great grandmother; the house where she lived; questions about my grandmother's birth date and circumstances; even the date of my great-grandfather Anschel's death.

I'm not obsessive about genealogy by any means, and in fact -- despite the fact that I have visited my great-grandmother Ettel's grave on several occasions over the year (click HERE to see the progression) -- I have never really looked into our family history in a serious way.

But our session at the town hall with Dorin Frankel last week, and our subsequent trip to Vicovu de Sus and discovery of what we believe was the house where our great-grandfather Anschel lived in 1880, left some loose ends that needed tidying, or at least some questions that I wanted to try to answer. I couldn't leave town without at least trying to resolve them.

One of these was a street address in Radauti -- strada Larionescu 20 -- that my second cousin, Rae Barent, who has made a serious effort a tracing family history, sent -- and which was confirmed by the records I looked at during a second session with Dorin at City Hall yesterday. This was the address where my great-great grandmother, Chaya Dvoira Herer Halpern, lived.

I also found out, by correlating the information found in the archives (and some sent by Rae) with info at the Radauti Jewish heritage web site (lots of cheers to the people who put together the amazing documentation material on the cemetery) that Chaya Dvoira, the daughter of Moshe (Moses) Mortko and Ruchel Hörer, died Feb. 22 1905 at the age of 69 -- the registry gave her cause of death as "old age" -- was buried in the Radauti Jewish cemetery. It also described her as single, not a widow (which probably means that her marriage, like that of her daugher Celia -- Zirl -- and David Rosenberg, my grandmother's parents, had not been formally registered with the city officials. From the registry, I could see that this was a fairly common practice.)

This morning, armed with the plot and row numbers I found on the Radauti cemetery web site for a "Chaya Dvoira daughter of Moshe Morko" who died in 1905, I returned to the Jewish cemetery. Mr. Popescu showed me the row -- and I entered the tilting forest of stones, again crunching through the undergrowth in my boots. I had to scrutinize the Hebrew epitaphs on each one, testing my basic Hebrew to its limits. After half an hour or so, there it was: I could read the name. The stone is smaller than some of the others, but it has the typical braided candlesticks and hands raised blessing the flames, beautifully carved. And there are still traces of red and green paint. I pulled away a strand of stray vines: not sure what, if anything, I actually felt. Glad to be there; cognizant of distance, time, realms; the passing of time and history. Wishing the others could have been there too. Wondering what she looked like!

Amid the forest of stones, a piece of my distant past. The small stone on the left. Photo: Ruth Ellen Gruber

My cousins and I had tried to find Larionescu street, but in today's city there is no record of it. Dorin Frankel, however, knew where it was -- near the synagogue -- and he walked with me there after our session yesterday morning at City Hall. The street name has been changed, but the house is still there -- nicely maintained and modernized inside.

Looking into courtyard of house at Larionescu 20.

At Chaya Dvoira's pump. Strada Larionescu 20.

Other information I came across in the City Hall registry books, during a couple of hours there with Dorin Frankel:

-- my great-grandfather Anschel Gruber (the one who lived in the house we found in Vicovu de Sus) died in 1914, possibly in September of that year. But his death wasn't recorded in the registry until 1920. The book says he is buried in the Radauti cemetery.

-- There is no birth record for my grandmother, Rebecca Rosenberg, who I thought was born in about 1895.... BUT there is a record of the birth to Rebecca's parents, Zirl (later Anglicized to Celia) Halpern and David Rosenberg (not officially registered as married at the time), in Oberwikow, or Vicovu de Sus of TWINS on Sept. 25, 1899 -- including a daughter Rifka (Rebecca in Yiddish) and a son, Jüdel, whose bris was on Oct. 2. The family left for the States in about 1906, but Jüdel's death is included in the Radauti City Hall registry (though added in 1920), indicating he must have died very young.

Romania -- Occupational Hazards

Siret -- new cemetery from middle cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Sept. 6, 2009

I tromped around in the Jewish cemetery in Siret, Romania (on the border with Ukraine) this morning: as I already knew, but recognized yet again, this is not the best time of year to be trying to research and/or photograph neglected Jewish cemeteries....In Radauti, a few days ago, I got hot and sweaty clumping through the grass and weeds in a cemetery that is actually very well maintained (by the gold-toothed Mr. Popescu, who also provides water in a plastic bottle to wash hands with, according to tradition, when leaving the cemetery. He pours it three times over your fist. A woman who may or may not be Mrs. Popescu will open up the tall domed ceremonial hall and draw out slim candles, if you ask.)

At Radauti, I was bothered (so to speak) by the spider webs that looped across the spaces between the tombstones and also draped from the overhanging branches to the stone. More so than the webs, I was bothered by the big fat brown spiders that sat amid them, waiting, or occasionally scutting up the slim threads when they felt a human presence.

When I got back from photographing the stones in Radauti, actually, several hours later, I was perturbed to find, crawling on the brilliant white of my hotel bed linen, a little black tick....Shades of the fear of lime disease (from which a friend of mine in Hungary has been suffering.) Also memories of how I was bitten by a tick when visiting the old Jewish cemetery on the Lido of Venice, some years ago. I had to get a tetanus shot and take the dead tick to the health service for analysis. An interesting way to see untouristed parts of the city.

At Siret, there were no spiders. But there was plenty of tall grass that I swathed through -- thank goodness for my cowboy boots. They saved my legs 3 years ago, when I tripped and fell over a hidden stone in the cemetery of Sadagora, Ukraine.

This is the third time I've been to Siret, whose three cemeteries are among the most impressive. I also love the way you can discern the hand of individual artists -- there are "templates" of style, arrangements of elements as well as individualistic style of carving.

This has always been one of my favorite stones in Siret. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The tall grass and other undergrowth made it difficult to get to many if not most parts of the special "middle" cemetery; but it was Sunday, and standing there, swimming through the weeds, recording the physical reminders of so many Jews who once lived here -- the archetypical "Tribe of Stones" -- I could hear the Sunday service the one of the local churches, broadcast over a loudspeaker.

Romania -- Family history

Great Synagogue, Radauti. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm too tired to write much tonight. Suffice it to say that the Cousins and Candlesticks tour had its genealogical high spots.... We visited the tomb of our great-grandmother, Ettel Gruber, in the Jewish Cemetery in Radauti (where I have been three times before since 1978).

Photo: Doru Losneanu

Thanks to the good efforts (and contacts) of Doru Losneanu, Mr. Dorian Frankel helped us go through records at the Radauti Town Hall. We found the marriage registry for the parents of both our Grandfather, Ephraim/Frank (that is, Anschel Gruber, widower, aged 34 and Ettel Lecker, single, aged 19) in 1880 and our grandmother, Rebecca Rosenberg (David Rosenberg and Celia Halpern) in 1902.




This also gave us the address in the village of Vicovu de Sus where, it seems, Anschel Gruber lived at the time of his marriage.

We drove to Vicovu de Sus, about 1/2 an hour's drive, up at the border with Ukraine -- there is a border crossing there for local people. It's a village strung out for seeming miles along one road... with the help of a couple of very nice local policemen, we found what we believe was the house, an old wooden farmstead, set down a dirt track, amid cornfields, well of the road (apparently an elderly woman, as well as a barking dog, lives there -- and she does have a satellite dish...).

Spain -- Cemetery Controvery in Toledo Resolved

Philip Carmel, the executive director of the Jewish cemetery preservation organization Lo-Tishkach reports a successful conclusion to the controversy over about 100 graves dug up from the medieval Jewish cemetery in Toledo, Spain to make way for the expansion of a school that already occupies part of the cemetery site.

All the bones were reburied in their original grave sites at a ceremony on Sunday.

As Sam Gruber and I have noted in earlier blog posts, the Toledo construction was halted earlier this year after heated protests, including demonstrations outside Spanish embassies.

Phil makes clear that the government, local authorities and Jewish organizations cooperated to work out a satisfactory solution to the problem.

He writes:

I am pleased to inform you that yesterday, Sunday June 21, saw the reburial of all the bones removed from the medieval cemetery in Toledo. The remains were buried on site in the actual graves from which they had been removed. This was achieved after protracted negotiations which only reached fruition last Thursday in Madrid at which point we decided not to publicise details of the reburial until after it had concluded.

This remarkable and historic solution brings a satisfactory conclusion to a chapter which has seen a tremendous degree of solidarity and cooperation on the part of the Spanish government and the local Jewish federation and a willingness to work together with the Conference of European Rabbis and the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe to achieve an amicable solution within the boundaries of Halachah.

At all times, we have insisted that the remains of these Toledo Jews should be buried in their chosen resting place and not transferred to another site. We are highly satisfied that the moving ceremony which took place yesterday in the presence of local Jewish leaders, heads of the regional authority of Castilla la Mancha, and the president of the CPJCE, Rabbi Elyokim Schlesinger has given the correct conclusion to our work.

I want to also state for the record our deep gratitude for the unstinting and dedicated work of Ambassador Ana Salomon and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in assisting us to find a solution to this matter in the face of unwarranted protests and misinformation directed against the Spanish government and the local Jewish Federation.

I hope that our work to save this historic cemetery in Toledo will prove to be a prototype for how governments, local Jewish communities and representative Jewish organisations can work together for the benefit of preserving these cemeteries in Europe.

Poland -- Upcoming commemorative and cultural events

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

In Poland, there may be only 15,000 (or so) Jews -- but the summer months are filled with Jewish culture and heritage events. This year is no exception.

From big Jewish culture festivals, to individual commemorative events marking sites of Jewish heritage, much is going on. Some are sponsored by local civic organizations, some by committed local activists, some by the Israel embassy, some by local Jewish communities and Jewish organizations -- and some by a combination of organizers and funders who work together on the projects.

This month will see at least two commemorative events.

This Sunday, June 14, a ceremony will take place in the little town of Brzostek to memorialize the destroyed Jewish community there. It will formally rededicate the Jewish cemetery, which has been newly fenced put in order, and also unveil a Hebrew-language monument. In the course of restoring the cemetery, some 30 old tombstones, which have come to light in recent years, were re-erected. In addition, a plaque will be dedicated in the town center -- in Polish and English -- in memory of the former Jewish residents of the town. The project is being carried out in full co-operation with both the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, and the Brzostek town council.

Rabbis and local dignitaries will attend the ceremony, as will pupils from local schools.

"The town is regarding it as a major civic event and organizing various exhibitions on Brzostek's Jewish history," writes Connie Webber, the head of the Littman Library Jewish publishing house, said in an email. "Everyone with a Brzostek connection is invited to participate. Buses will be arranged to and from Krakow on the Sunday, and arrangements have been made for kosher food to be available both on the Sunday and for the preceding Shabbat in Krakow."

Connie and her husband, the scholar Jonathan Webber -- who family stems from Brzostek -- have been instrumental in organizing the commemoration.

Just one week later, on June 22, a plaque commemorating the former Scheinbach Synagogue building (today the town library) will be unveiled in Przemysl, in the far southeast of Poland on the border with Ukraine. Participating will be guests from Poland and abroad. The plaque is a joint initiative of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland and Michael Freund of Raanana in Israel.

Located at ul. Slowackiego 15, the synagogue was built for the Reform community in 1886-1890 and was designed by Marceli Pilecki. (Another synagogue in the town, built in 1909, stands abandoned and falling ever more into ruin on Plac Unii Brzeskiej, in the Zasanie district across the river. There is a large Jewish cemetery next to the main municipal cemetery, with tombs from the 19th and 20th centuries.)
(Synagogue photo fodz.pl)

As for Jewish culture festivals -- everyone knows about the big Krakow Jewish Culture Festival -- but a a number of others are in the works in Poland. They include:

Gdansk -- 10th Baltic Days of Jewish Culture. June 14-15

Bialystok -- 2nd Zachor Festival of Jewish Culture. June 15-16

Chmielnik -- VII Meeting with Jewish Culture, June 19-21

Krakow -- Festival of Jewish Culture, June 27-July 5. The Other Europeans concert will be July 3.

Warsaw -- Singer's Warsaw Festival of Jewish Culture, Aug. 29-Sept. 6. A big festival, increasingly similar in scope to that in Krakow.

Lodz -- Festival of the Dialogue of Four Cultures. Usually in September

For an ever-growing list of Jewish festivals in all parts of Europe, check the link in the side bar of this blog!

Italy -- Jewish Route in Pesaro

A Jewish heritage route including the synagogue and the Jewish cemetery will be open this summe in the Italian Adriatic port of Pesaro. Unfortunately, the sites will only be open one day a week -- Thursday afternoons -- during June, July and August.

The synagogue, probably dating from the early 17th century and noted for its beautifully decorate vaulting, is on via delle Scuole and will be open from 4-7 p.m.

The cemetery is nearby on the San Bartolo hill, and will be open from 5-7 p.m.

For information, call +39/0721 387474-357

La sinagoga di via delle Scuole sarà visitabile nei mesi di giugno, luglio e agosto, ogni giovedì dalle 16 alle 19. I visitatori della sinagoga troveranno ancora allestita al piano terra dello storico edificio la mostra “1938-1945 La persecuzione degli ebrei in Italia”, a cura della Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea CDEC. I 38 pannelli articolati in 15 sezioni tematiche - dove convivono testi, foto, libri, giornali e documenti privati - ricostruiscono con impostazione scientifica le vicende subite dagli ebrei in un periodo ben preciso del Novecento.

L’apertura estiva è possibile grazie alla disponibilità delle associazioni FAI e Serc e della dottoressa Maria Letizia Siepi.

Accanto alla sinagoga, anche il cimitero ebraico sul colle San Bartolo (strada panoramica San Bartolo c/o n. 161), sarà aperto da giugno a settembre il giovedì dalle 17 alle 19. In agosto, è prevista inoltre un’apertura eccezionale sabato 15 in occasione della festività: mattino 10-12, pomeriggio 17-19; per informazioni Ente Parco Naturale Monte San Bartolo 0721 400858, 335 1746509.

Informazioni tel. 0721 387474-357 Servizio Musei_Comune di Pesaro.

Poland -- Dzialoszyce, commemoration, pilgrimage, travel

Ruth in Dzialoszyce, 2006. Photo: Jack Sal

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Pilgrimage and commemoration form important components of Jewish travel in eastern and central Europe. In fact, in Poland in particular, few Jews visited in the post-war communist period for any other purpose.

There were -- and still are -- strictly religious pilgrimages to the tombs of great rabbis. These are facilitated now by new infrastructure including kosher food services and accommodation.

Commemorative pilgrimages to death camps and other Holocaust-related sites also still draw thousands of people each year. More than half a million people visit Auschwitz alone. Here too infrastructure has changed radically, enabling the experience to educate about the Shoah and about the Jewish communities that were destroyed, rather than to focus them on mourning and commemoration.

At Auschwitz, among other things, the Auschwitz Jewish Center, which opened in 2000 in the surviving synagogue in the town of Oswiecim, focuses on the life in a town that before World War II was a majority Jewish town.

Before Auschwitz became the ultimate symbol of the Holocaust, it was just an ordinary Polish town known as Oswiecim. The majority of its citizens were Jewish. Generations of merchants, rabbis, doctors, and lawyers raised families here and contributed to a richly textured Jewish culture. Jews worked, married, studied and worshipped, cared for their families, and served the community. The tragedy of Holocaust suddenly ended the centuries-old Jewish life of the town.

The Center facilities include the Jewish Museum, Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue, and Education Center. The Center’s exhibitions and programs are open to visitors and students from around the world. Dedicated to public education, the Center’s programs teach about the richness of pre-war Jewish life in Oswiecim and build awareness of the dangers of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and the other forms of intolerance.

The Center's current exhibition is on Jewish survivors from Oswiecim who now live in Israel.

New forms of commemorative pilgrimage increasingly involve bridge-building between Jews and local Poles.

The filmmaker Menachem Daum led such a trip last month -- accompanying a group of students and two Holocaust survivors from Lost Angeles to Dzialoszyce, Poland, where they commemorated Holocaust victims but also met with local students and town officials.

On May 15th, 2009 a group of Jewish high school seniors from the Shalhevet School in Los Angeles, accompanied by two Holocaust survivors, were greeted in Dzialoszyce by Polish students and teachers from the local high school as well as by students from Krakow's Jagiellonian University. The group marched together to the ruins of the town's once magnificent synagogue where they were addressed in Polish by one of the survivors. They also learned that the synagogue had housed a voluntary kitchen that the community operated with great sacrifice in order to keep thousands from starving during the Nazi occupation. The town's Mayor greeted the group and promised to shore up the synagogue ruins so they do not collapse. The group also paid their respects at the monument near the mass grave of over 1,500 Jews shot during the deportation on September 3rd, 1942. Finally, the group ascended the hill to the Jewish cemetery. Although there are no longer any tombstones or a wall, this site is sacred because of the thousands of Dzialoszyce Jews buried there. The final prayers of the Jews of Dzialoszyce at this cemetery were recalled and the shofar was again sounded, as it had been 67 earlier. The ceremony ended with Poles and Jews affixing symbolic tombstones to the trees that now cover the cemetery .

Menachem posted the following video on Youtube:




The synagogue still stands crumbling, and physically it all looks much the same. But what a difference in attitude this represents from the first time I visited Dzialozyce, in 1990. I wrote about that visit in the New York Times in October of that year in my first major article about Jewish travel in Poland, "Visiting the Vestiges of Jewish Poland."

An elderly woman, her face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut, approached us one day last June as we stood gazing at the yawning roofless wreck that was once the synagogue in Dzialoszyce, a sleepy village 30 miles or so northeast of Cracow in southern Poland.

''Do you speak Jewish?'' she asked in Polish, and mumbled a few words of Yiddish.

It's been a long time, she apologized; she's forgotten almost everything she knew of the language.

The woman came with us - three Americans and two Polish experts on synagogue architecture - as we inspected the battered masonry shell. Children lounging around a bumper car and video arcade in front of the ruin stared as we passed; a few of them joined us, too.

Built in 1852 according to a neo-classical design by Felicjan Frankowski, the synagogue is an impressive monument to the destruction of a people.

Before the Holocaust, Dzialoszyce was a Jewish town: in 1939, 7,000 of its 10,000 inhabitants were Jews. The synagogue would have been magnificent, with its tall arched windows and sculpted outer decorations. But all that remains of a frescoed interior is a few patches of flaking blue paint.

Later, the old woman and the children escorted us beyond the edge of the village, to the site of the Jewish cemetery, destroyed by the Nazis. A simple white monument, erected Sept. 1, 1989, on the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the war, commemorates the thousands of Jews who were slaughtered here in mass graves or deported to Nazi death camps.

''I used to work for the rabbi here before the war,'' the old woman confided. ''I will never forget what he told me. He said that when the birds go away from here, the Jews will go away too. One year, there were no birds. And after that . . .''

Read full article

Macedonia --Jewish Cemetery in Shtip to be Restored

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Good news -- the web site balkantravellers.com reports that the abandoned Jewish cemetery in Shtip (or Stip) Macedonia will be restored. Announcement of the project was made last month by the Institute and Museum of Shtip, which is in eastern Macedonia.

“The money for the reconstruction project was secured by the government, and with the project the Jewish cemetery will become a monument of culture,” Zaran Chitkushev, head of the Shtip Institute and Museum told the Dnevnik newspaper today.

The project involves the building of parking lots, pedestrian alleyways, benches, monuments, and the whole area of 14,000 square metres will be fenced by a wall.

“We are in constant contact with the European community in Macedonia. We will also invite an archaeologist from Israel as an associate,” Chitkushev added.

According to the jewish-heritage-europe.eu web site, there are about 120 gravestones still visible in the cemetery, but all have been vandalized and heavily damaged. There are probably many fragments scattered along the slope.

UPDATE -- Sam Gruber has posted pictures of the Stip cemetery -- click HERE.

Jewish settled in Stip in the 16th century -- as in much of the region, they were Sephardic Jews fleeing Iberia. In 1943, along with almost all the other Jews of Macedonia, the 560 Jews in Stip were deported to Treblinka death camp.

There is a Holocaust memorial in Stip, but as far as I know, no Jews live in the town anymore -- or maybe there are one or two still there. Eight or nine years ago, when I was in Macedonia for the annual ceremony marking the anniversary of the deportation of Macedonian Jews, I met a man who was described at the time as the last Jew in Stip....

Today, about 200 Jews lived in Macedonia, virtually all of them in the capital, Skopje, where there is a small, functioning synagogue. A Holocaust memorial museum and education center is under construction.

Elsewhere in Macedonia, renovation of the gateway to the historic Jewish cemetery in Bitola was recently completed -- see pictures on Sam Gruber's blog.

Romania -- More on Botosani Cemetery desecration

Lucia Apostol in Bucharest has sent me further information about the vandal attack last month on the Jewish cemetery in Botosani, in northern Romania.

The desecration was reported in local and national media. In all, 24 tombstone stones were destroyed, 21 of them very badly and two of them so badly smashed that it is impossible to tell whose graves they marked. Total damage is estimated at $10,000.

Police suspect four teenagers of the attack -- two of them 14 years old and two of them 16.

Romania -- Jewish cemetery in Botosani Vandalized

I've just caught up with the news that the Jewish cemetery in Botosani, Romania was vandalized last month, and 24 tombstones were destroyed. The Bucharest Herald ran a graphic picture:

Photo: Bucharest Herald

From the picture, it seems as if the graves that were desecrated were in the most recent part of the cemetery.

According to the Romanian media, local police said that their initial investigation indicated that the desecration had been carried out by a group of seven youths.

“There are no signs that show it was a proof of anti-Semitism as there were no other signs or inscriptions. I think there were a few young persons under the influence of alcohol. It is a pity that the value and beauty of these old monuments were destroyed,” the local Jewish community president David Iosif told the media immediately after the attack.

The Romanian Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, meanwhile, issued a communique criticizing Romanian authorities for excluding any anti-Semite motivation when such incidents take place.

"As much as we would like to believe the official position, we can not ignore – taking into account all previous incidents - the fact that the Jewish centers are preferred targets of the 'vandals'."

I visited the Botosani cemetery in 2006. There are several sections -- the more modern section is still in use by the tiny Jewish community. The older part of this features gravestones with metal canopies.

Behind the modern section is an older, rather overgrown, section where tombstones feature extraordinarily vivid carvings of lions and other animals, many of them clearly by the same artist/stone mason.

Botosani Jewish cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Next to this cemetery there is an even older cemetery, also with elaborately carved stones, but when I visited it was almost impossible to enter because of the vegetation.

Botosani has one of Romania's most important synagogues -- very plain on the outside but with gorgeous interior wall and ceiling paintings dating from the early 19th century and an extremely elaborate carved and painted Ark that arches into the sanctuary.

(Candle)sticks on Stone -- Introducing My New Web Site

As I reported earlier, I have been awarded the first Michael Hammer Tribute Research Grant by the Hadassah Brandeis Institute for a project called “(Candle)sticks on Stone: Representing the Woman in Jewish Tombstone Art”.

Each year the HBI awards 20 to 30 grants to support academic and artistic projects about Jews and gender. My project was selected by the HBI board as "an exceptional research award" to be dedicated to the memory of Michael Hammer, the husband of one of the board members, who died last year.

My project centers around the richly decorated tombstones of women in the Jewish cemetery in Radauti, Romania, where my own great-grandmother, Ettel Gruber, is buried. Many of these stones bear sometimes very elaborate depictions of candlesticks, and of women's hands blessing the flames.

As part of the project, I have set up a combined web site/blog on which I will post photo galleries and text related to my subject and also post blog entries chronicling my reflections and insights as I progress. There is also room for comment from visitors.

Please visit the site at candlesticksonstone.wordpress.com.

The site is in a continuing state of evolution and development -- so I hope you'll keep coming back!

Budapest -- Bob Cohen, Lipot Baumhorn and the Main Jewish Cemetery

A tomb designed by Lipot Baumhorn in the Kozma utca cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Bob Cohen, whose blog (Dumneazu) I've linked to several times in the past, has a post about his first visit to the main Jewish cemetery in Budapest, the enormously huge cemetery on Kozma utca at the end of the 37 tram.

Bob himself finds it astonishing that in all his years in Bp, he has never visited there before -- in fact, I find it astonishing, too, given all the time in past years that I myself have spent there.

Tomb designed by Odon Lechner and Bela Lajta. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The cemetery figures prominently in two of my books, Jewish Heritage Travel, of course, but also in Upon the Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today, which came out in 1994.

When I first visited, some 20 years ago, the cemetery was pretty much a wilderness -- most of it was overgrown with ivy, saplings, weeds, bushes. Only the very front part was cleared.

My most memorable experience came when I was researching "Doorposts" -- and Ed Serotta accompanied me there to try to find the grave of Lipot Baumhorn, the great synagogue architect, who died in 1932.

I recount the full story in "Doorposts" -- going to the office of the cemetery, having the man there riffle through endless index cards (nowadays the records are computerized) to find the plot. Then following him around the cemetery (first going in the wrong direction) until we found the proper plot -- but no stone, just a huge clump of trees. Then I looked closer and saw that the trees were actually a thick mass of ivy, covering one stone, and I made out a few letters -- it was, in fact Baumhorn's gravestone.

Ed and I ripped away the ivy, uncovering the stone: it was a very emotional experience. On the stone's face was a list of synagogues that Baumhorn had designed or remodeled... at the top was a bas relief of his masterpiece, the dome of the synagogue in Szeged. Then, there was an epitaph written in highly complex, poetic language by the great Rabbi of Szeged, Immanuel Löw, about how he sought synagogues in heaven.... I took the Hungarian original to a series of friends around the city who put together different translations of the difficult lines.

This is the way that the architect and architectural historian Janos Gerle rendered the poem:

Our inspired artist: His inspiration and heart gave birth
To the lines of synagogues that look toward heaven and awaken piety.
Above his peaceful home hovered devotion;
The soul of a father and husband gave birth of heaven-seeking consolation.

In Szolnok, outside the LB synagogue, 2006