Lo Tishkach has published its latest report into the state of the Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust-era mass graves in the eastern Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk. The report outlines the current situation of the location of 12 Jewish cemeteries and 18 mass grave sites.
Most of the cemetery sites have been given a red rating – meaning that they contain neither adequate identification on site, fencing or delineation nor appropriate maintenance.
Among the mass grave sites, six have been found to be unidentified, unprotected and without maintenance. A further four sites require proper memorialisation, as they are marked with Soviet-era monuments omitting the Jewish identity of the victims buried there.
The report is the fourth to be published of Ukraine’s oblasts by Lo Tishkach and follows extensive surveys, local interviews and additional research undertaken over the spring and summer of 2010 by students of the Dnipropetrovsk and Kryvyi Rih Jewish Communities and with the support of the Genesis Philathropy Group.
Additional reports into the Chernihiv and Zakarpattia regions of Ukraine will be published in the coming months alongside similar reports on Jewish burial grounds in Latvia and Lithuania. In total, more than 800 sites were surveyed this year.
As a result of previous survey reports, memorialisation projects have already been launched at cemetery and mass grave sites in the Kyiv and Cherkasy regions of Ukraine. It is our intention that restoration and memorialisation projects at cemetery and mass grave sites in Dnipropetrovsk will be undertaken in the spring and summer months of 2011.
The report can be downloaded here.
