The last few weeks in Europe have seen temperatures soar to heights generally unheard of in this part of the world. Unused to such climes, most of the continent has had to escape the sun while others have had the opportunity to revel during our traditional holiday period.
But while there has been a general slowdown as befits this time of the year, Lo Tishkach volunteers have spent a good deal of their youthful energies exposing themselves to the elements, traipsing through the villages and towns of central and eastern Europe and carefully recording every last bit of information and photo evidence to preserve what is so sadly often the last bit of Jewish physical heritage in these regions.
With the continued and generous support from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, youth volunteers have spread out across the Vidzeme region of Latvia, closing off a three year project to chart the physical situation of all the Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust mass graves in Latvia.
Hundreds of miles to the south-east, other groups are carefully visiting burial grounds in Silesia in southern Poland, for centuries home to flourishing Jewish communities, largely wiped out in the Shoah. Here, support for our activities has come also from the Rothschild (Hanadiv) Foundation, for whose contribution we are extremely grateful.
As these records are translated and carefully placed onto the online Lo Tishkach database at our Brussels hub, we will shortly have the opportunity to prepare detailed reports on these two regions – closing off Latvia but just beginning in Poland – where in fact our practical work began, some five years ago.
This seems a good point to look back on the work of Lo Tishkach and the mammoth project we set ourselves to create an online, publicly accessible database of all Jewish burial sites in Europe. The vision for this project came from the Claims Conference but the ability to connect with Jewish communities and the vast resource of volunteer networks came about through our links with the Conference of European Rabbis – an organisation I have also had the honour and pleasure to work for during the last seven years in Brussels – and spurred on in our work by the boundless energy of the CER’s late executive director, Rabbi Aba Dunner, zats”l
Gathering all the initial data way back in 2006 and 2007 gave us the ability to see what could be done in real terms in the field and so it was that we openly strayed from “just” collecting material for the online database. Rather, we soon realised that many of the existing records were erroneous, out of date or just simply did not convey the real situation of these sites today.
So it was that we launched the Masovian project as a pilot in 2007 to physically visit around 150 sites in the vast region of the Masovian vovoidership in and around Warsaw in eastern Poland.
Before the war, hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in this area and there was barely a village or shtetl without substantial Jewish populations in the region.
Masovia taught us what could and should be done. We then moved into Ukraine covering vast regions of this vast country and centralising many of our activities in this part of the former Soviet Union so rich in Jewish history. As we discovered the perilous state of so many sites in Ukraine, we were able to cost, preserve, rededicate and repair many sites giving practical meaning to the creation of the database.
Now standing at over 11,000 sites with more than a thousand already physically surveyed, much still remains to be done. So that the database is truly serving the purpose for which it was developed – to provide a continuing resource for the real work of protection and preservation.
With the CER based in Brussels and the creation of the database largely administrative, this was a natural home for Lo Tishkach but over the years, more and more of our activities have moved over to eastern Europe where the practical work takes place. This process, I’m pleased to report will continue. Since it is only natural that Lo Tishkach is centralised in an area where so many of these sites are located.
As summer, the peak of our physical survey work, leaves us and we get ready for the Jewish holiday period and the winter work of processing the material as well as mobilising new volunteers through our seminars and education projects, it is a good time to look back on the immense work of all involved in the Lo Tishkach project and to thank them for their contributions.
This is but the start. At this time of the Jewish year, it is traditional in many communities to visit grave sites thereby linking the past heritage of the Jewish People with the future hopes of the New Year. The summer is over but as the organisation’s name suggests, Lo Tishkach, we won’t forget it as we take on new challenges.
Philip Carmel
Executive Director
Lo Tishkach Foundation
