SAVING JEWISH LIVES AND TRADITIONS

The East European Jewish Heritage Project

Conservation

Slonim Synagogue

Belarus is steeped in Jewish heritage.  Sadly with the murder of  so many members of the Jewish community by Germans during the Second World War all that is left of the Jewish past in many towns and villages are abandoned synagogues, yeshivas and cemeteries.  The remaining Jewish community, beset with many other pressures, and divisions within itself, does not have the resources to conserve and renew these sites of great historic and aesthetic importance.

The East European Jewish Heritage Project has undertaken to help preserve the artefacts of the Jewish past in Belarus, believing that they are part of the key to the Jewish future.  If your roots are in Belarus then perhaps you might wish to assist and support this work by helping to preserve a cemetery or building in your ancestral shtetl. Please Click Here to enquire about your ancestral village.

One of our major undertakings is the preservation of the Slonim Synagogue.  This extraordinary, Italian designed 17^th Century structure has been declared by the World Monument Fund to be one of the most important Jewish heritage sites in Europe needing preservation.  Now with the help of the WMF and the generous support of the Hanadiv Charitable Foundation (UK) the East European Jewish Heritage Project is working to conserve the synagogue.  Additionally the entire Slonim community, Jew and non-Jew alike, have formed a committee to help and guide this work.    This is part of the East European Jewish Heritage Project’s commitment to promote civil society in Belarus by encouraging grassroots’ initiatives. Read more about the Slonim Synagogue.

Cemeteries There are virtually hundreds of abandoned Jewish cemeteries in Belarus.  After the Jewish populations in villages were murdered by German, Latvian and Lithuanian death squads no one was left to look after these burial grounds.  Sometimes local citizens took it on themselves to care for these graves but more often they became derelict and were absorbed into pastureland or forest.  A further problem arose from Soviet era law which allowed the reclamation of cemetery land for other use twenty-five years after the last burial.  While this law was applied with equal ruthlessness to the cemeteries of all faiths, Jewish cemeteries, by virtue of the German massacres of the war period were particularly vulnerable with most of them falling under the remit of this law during the mid 1960s, a time of intense religious repression.  Since the early 1990s, and especially since 1994, this practice has largely been halted but this does nothing to prevent the natural deterioration of unattended gravesites.

Fortunately three developments hold out hope for the preservation of Jewish cemeteries.  First, the current government, at both local and national levels, is cooperative with groups willing to undertake the conservation of a cemetery.  Second, descendents from these villages living abroad are now able to visit Belarus.  Many of these, both as individuals and groups, have begun to underwrite the repair and maintenance of cemeteries.  Third, the marked increase of interest in Jewish genealogy, especially through the efforts of JewishGen has made the preservation of Jewish cemeteries as archives an important priority for family researchers.

The East European Jewish Heritage Project has a cemetery preservation team composed of archaeologists, conservations and landscapers who work with interested groups to bring cemeteries, as it were, back to life. Often we work with groups who actively participate in restoration.  Dartmouth college students, for example, conserved the cemetery in Soptskin in 2002 and are returning in 2003 to work in the Indura cemetery.  The East European Jewish Heritage Project can assist you in restoring the cemetery in your ancestral home and provide, at modest cost, indexing.  Please Click Here to request more information.

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