Four Ukrainian Jewish cemeteries rededicated

Four newly-fenced Jewish cemeteries in areas where Jewish communities were wiped out during the Shoah were redicated next week.

The four cemeteries, all in Ukrainian Transcarpathia, were recently fenced by the ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Foundation, a German-based non-profit which has fenced and protected some 70 such sites across Eastern Europe in the last two years.

Funding for the project has been provided by the Federal Republic of Germany.

Ceremonies too place at Radvanka, Horinchovo, Lypcha and Vyshkovo, all sites in Transcarpathia, a region in SW Ukraine bordering Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

The ceremonies were attended by descendants of Jews from these villages from the United States, Germany and Israel. Consuls and other diplomatic corps from Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania attended the events as well as the mayors of the respective villages and the deputy governor of Zakarpatia oblast.

«The ESJF has set its task to protect all the thousands of abandoned Jewish cemeteries in central and eastern Europe, » Philip Carmel, ESJF Chief Executive Officer said.  « The first stage of course is the physical protection through demarcation and fencing but the long-term protection requires the involvement of local people, most particularly in areas where there are no longer Jewish communities because of the Shoah. »

The ESJF currently works on fencing projects in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Romania, Serbia and Moldova. It has recently launched a mass survey and monitoring project across the whole of Ukraine, a country with an estimated 2,000 Jewish cemeteries.

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