As units of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen moved eastwards during World War II, they set about murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews at thousands of execution sites across Eastern Europe. It is our duty to mark every site in order that the memory of the Holocaust is never forgotten or denied and the lessons are learned in perpetuity
The Lo Tishkach Foundation has completed a report on legislation and practice relating to the protection and preservation of Jewish burial grounds in Romania. The report, based on preliminary research, finds that only 17 of the country’s 821 Jewish cemeteries are registered as national monuments.
The Lo Tishkach Foundation deeply regrets the passing of Rabbi Chazkel Besser, a pioneer in the preservation of Jewish cemeteries as well as the revitalisation of post-war Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Rabbi Besser firmly placed the issue of the preservation of Jewish cemeteries on to the agenda of the Jewish World and this important work has been a major factor in the setting up of the Lo Tishkach Foundation by the Claims Conference and the Conference of European Rabbis. All those today involved in the preservation of Eastern Europe’s Jewish heritage owe Rabbi Besser a great debt of gratitude for his deep commitment and involvement in this field over many decades. May his memory be for a blessing.
The swift processing of data on Jewish cemeteries and mass graves is key to organising the protection of these sites. As our 2009-10 projects are taking place in Ukraine and the Baltic states, much of the material we gather is in Russian. Can you devote a few hours to translate some of the data from Russian to English?
A delegation of the Conference of European Rabbis, including Philip Carmel, Executive Director of the Lo Tishkach Foundation, met with European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek in Brussels.
