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Germany: New Jewish cemetery planned; Hungary: Jewish cemetery vandalised;International: Coalition to protect mass grave sites; Latvia: Cemetery and memorial vandalised; Poland: Cemetery clean-up, ownership; UK: Lottery money for cemetery restoration; Ukraine: Lviv Jewish sites to be marked. |
UK Jewish Cemetery to be Restored with Lottery Money
December 20, 2010 – £494,000 have been awarded to the restoration of Deane Road Jewish Cemetery in Kensington, Liverpool. Following the restorsation, this final resting place of many early community leaders, including Liverpool’s first Jewish mayor, will be fully accessible to the public.
The Liverpool Old Hebrew Congregation purchased the site in 1835 and used it for burials until 1929. In 1952, the prayer hall and the caretaker’s cottage were demolished and the site was abandoned.
In addition to a new landscaping scheme, the restoration will include the creation of pathways and a sitting area. Read the original article.
Lviv Jewish Cemetery and Mass Killing Site to be Marked
December 22, 2011 – As part of an international design contest, remnants of an old Jewish cemetery in the Ukrainian city of Lviv as well as the local Janivski concentration camp will be marked with memorials.
The cemetery, which was destroyed by the Nazis and partly built upon, will be transformed into a memorial park following plans submitted by Ronit Lambrozo of Jerusalem. The memorial at the camp site, where more than 100,000 Jews were killed, will be built according to plans submitted by a California design team.
Also awarded within the contest was a project to memorialise the sites of three destroyed synagogues in Lviv’s old Jewish quarter.
The design competition was organised by Lviv city authorities in cooperation with the Lviv Centre for Urban History and the German Society for Technical Cooperation, or GTZ. Read the original article.
Riga Jewish Cemetery and Holocaust Memorial Desecrated
December 2010 – About a hundred gravestone’s in Riga’s Jewish cemetery were desecrated with large swastikas painted on them. The country’s president as well as the government and the city’s mayor condemned the attack. A week later, a monument dedicated to a man who saved dozens of Jews during World War II was also found to be vandalised with paint. The police have launched an investigation but so far have not found any evidence linking the two events. Read the original articles here and here.
Clean-up works at Jewish Cemetery in Zielona Gora
January 18, 2011 – The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ) co-ordinated clean-up works at the Jewish cemetery in Zielona Gora. In the course of the works, a memorial plaque was installed and remnants of an old car repair shop were removed from the site. Local inhabitants cleaned the pre-burial house. Established in 1814, the site was destroyed during World War II. Read the original article.
New Owner for Magnuszew Jewish Cemetery
January 19, 2011 – The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ) has obtained ownership of the Jewish cemetery in Magnuszew. The 18th-century site was destroyed in World War II and is completely devoid of gravestones, some of which can be found elsewhere in the town. Read the original article.
International Coalition Will Protect Mass Graves of Holocaust Victims
January 22, 2011 – Lo Tishkach has joined an international coalition to protect Holocaust mass grave sites in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Funding for this project is provided by the German government. The activities of the coalition will draw on research conducted by key organisations and individuals, including Lo Tishkach and French Catholic Priest Father Patrick Desbois, who, together with his research teams, will interview survivors in the towns and villages of Ukraine, Poland and Belarus in order to seek out all the sites of mass killing which began in 1941 with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Read the original article and the Lo Tishkach news release.
New Jewish Cemetery Planned in Bochum, Germany
January 26, 2011 – Municipal authorities in the city of Bochum in western Germany are preparing a 15,0000m² area of the city’s main cemetery for use by the Jewish community. Plans to establish a new Jewish burial ground in the city have become necessary in light of the fact that the existing Jewish cemetery at Wasserstrasse will reach its maximum capacity within five to eight years.
The projected area already provides an burial hall and is equipped with funeral facilities that are no longer used by the city’s authorities. Read the original article (in German).
Jewish Cemetery Vandalised in Hungary
January 30, 2011 – Seventy-five gravestones were vandalised by two teenagers at the Jewish cemetery in the Hungarian town of Marcali in what the police believe to be a spontaneous show of strength. According to a police spokesman, the damage at the site is estimated at about $7,500. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban condemned the attacks. Read the original article.
