13 September 2009
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Hundreds of Holocaust-era mass grave sites and cemeteries will be surveyed across Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia by local youth groups as part of the second year of a vast Lo Tishkach educational and Holocaust-memory project beginning in October. |
Research and educational seminars will begin to be held in the coming weeks for school and university-age students in the three Baltic States as preparation for surveys of hundreds of these sites once the winter snows thaw in early March.
The project has been made possible with the support of the Genesis Philanthropy Group which funds educational projects among Russian-speaking Jewish youth, as well as the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
The surveys will include comprehensive data on the geographical locations of the sites and their current physical condition as well as extensive photographs of the sites and their general area. Particular attention will be paid to the need to physically mark all of these sites as well as to ensure their clear demarcation and, where needed, fencing. A report will be submitted on every site detailing the necessary work and appraising the projected expenditure.
Results will also be presented to national governments and local authorities outlining their responsibilities to preserve and protect their own historical heritage and the physical memory of the Holocaust.
The work follows ground-breaking reports compiled by the Lo Tishkach Foundation on the legislative structure and practice on the ground concerning the preservation of these sites in the three Baltic States.
Before World War II, hundreds of Jewish communities existed in these countries of which more than 90 percent of the Jewish population was wiped out in the Holocaust by Nazi Einsatzgruppen units and their local collaborators.
“The absence of local Jewish communities in most of these towns and villages because of the Holocaust and the dwindling number of survivors makes it imperative upon us to act fast to identify these sites and preserve them both physically on site and for the historical record on an online database before it is too late,” said Lo Tishkach Executive Director, Philip Carmel.
“Since these sites are often the only remaining witness to the vibrancy of Jewish life which once filled these town and villages, their identification and protection is fundamental to the battle against Holocaust-denial,” Carmel added.
Current data on cemeteries and mass grave sites in the Baltic States made available to Lo Tishkach identifies some 200 mass graves sites in each of Latvia and Lithuania with around 20 in Estonia. At least a further 250 cemeteries have been identified across the region.
The project is co-ordinated by local Jewish communities in the three countries.
Similar surveys backed by historical research, local interviews and education projects are also to be launched this autumn at hundreds of sites across the Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine with a national teacher-training programme on the subject across the country.
Survey results are beginning to come in from work undertaken by Lo Tishkach in the Kiev and Odessa regions in Ukraine which took place over the summer. They show the urgent need for preservation, demarcation and identification at many of the sites (see ‘Help Save These Cemeteries’ – 11 September 2009). Many of these detailed reports are already available on the Lo Tishkach online database.
