France: Municipal decision expected on cemetery, Strasbourg Jewish cemetery vandalised – Germany: Cemetery project awarded, Gravestones re-erected – United Kingdom: Jewish cemetery restored – Poland: Jewish cemetery saved – Austria: Solution for cemetery restoration.
The Ukrainian Union of Jewish Students (UUJS), which has been a Lo Tishkach project partner since 2008, opened a photo exhibition in the Shalom Aleichem Museum in Kyiv. The exhibition features photographs of Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and community buildings that were visited by the UUJS and other Lo Tishkach partner organisations in the 2008-09 project year.
In October 2009, the Jewish cemetery in the Latvian town of Talsi was vandalised. Unknown perpetrators toppled and broke numerous gravestones and destroyed the entrance gate of the 19th century cemetery. The acts of vandalism occurred barely three months after the cemetery’s restoration.
Lo Tishkach is part of an international initiative that has launched an appeal to the German government to assist in the protection of Holocaust mass grave sites across Eastern Europe. At a press conference held in Berlin, Philip Carmel, Executive Director of the Lo Tishkach Foundation, stressed the need to identify and mark all Jewish burial sites before they are completely lost.
This report on the Jewish burial grounds of Kyiv Region, or Oblast, is one of the results of a number of education and research projects undertaken by the Lo Tishkach Foundation in the spring and summer of 2009. It catalogues 52 Jewish cemeteries and 29 Holocaust-era mass graves.
