Ground-breaking joint Project of the Lo Tishkach Foundation, the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad and the Association of Jewish Communities of Ukraine (VAAD)
The Lo Tishkach Foundation, in cooperation with the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad and the Association of Jewish Communities of Ukraine (VAAD), is commemorating the mass killings of Jews in the towns of Dymer, Fastiv and Baryshivka by dedicating memorial stones at these sites to the victims, marking the 70-year anniversary of the Holocaust.
Renovation and memorialization projects at these sites have been made possible following surveys at all Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust mass grave sites in Kyiv Oblast, undertaken by local youth and students, and coordination by the Lo Tishkach Foundation. The placing of memorials at these sites has been enabled by funds generated by the Honorable Jonathan J. Rikoon for the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad.
Memorial stones were inaugurated at Baryshivka, Fastiv and Dymer last week. More ceremonies are scheduled for the near future in Brovary and Tarascha.
The memorialization of these sites marks the first stage in a vast renovation and memorialization projects currently undertaken by the Lo Tishkach Foundation, which was set up in 2006 by the Conference of European Rabbis and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany
to help preserve the memory and protect the thousands of Jewish burial sites across the European continent. Since 2009, the Lo Tishkach Foundation has surveyed hundreds of sites across Ukraine, in the Cherkassy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Odessa and Zakarpattia Oblasts, representing over one third of the territory of Ukraine.
The Lo Tishkach Foundation and the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad are collaborating to install other memorials at Holocaust mass grave sites and cemeteries in the Kiev Oblast.
The Lo Tishkach Foundation is grateful for the support provided by the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, a United States Government agency that facilitates the protection and preservation of sites of ethnic minorities who were discriminated against during World War Two and were victims of genocide.
