It is very late after a full day of exploring Rohatyn, examining and locating some family homes, and documenting Jewish gravestones in the old cemetery. So I will make this quick.
Old cemetery headstone. Photo © 2011 Alex Feller.
I have uploaded [to the genealogy group private site] images of all of the tombstones that we were able to photograph and document at this time. These include tombstones in the old cemetery, the new cemetery, and outside the cemeteries spread throughout Rohatyn.
Ця стаття також доступна українською.
There are still several tombstones in the new cemetery that have not been photographed or examined due to lack of time and difficulty in access due to overgrowth of vegetation.
There are other tombstones that seem to be face down and are too heavy to move.
If you find the caption of the photo does not contain a translation of the tombstone, and you are able to read and translate the inscriptions, please please please volunteer to translate these and send the results to my email so I can post them.
I have to note that this important, emotional, and gratifying project would not have been possible without the following people:
- Jay and Marla Osborn for initiating contact and maintaining communication with Rohatyn librarian Ihor, and who display amazing persistence and desire to get this project implemented.
- Ihor who coordinated meetings with the Mayor of Rohatyn and Mr. Vorobets, and volunteers a large amount of time to translating Ukrainian for us during our visits with the Mayor, Mr. Vorobets, and several local Rohatyn citizens.
- Mr. Vorobets who has a genuine desire to learn, teach, and preserve the history of Rohatyn. He goes beyond the call of duty to find, move, and clean tombstones.
- And as Marla has written, to those that came before us in this project to preserve tombstones, fence the cemeteries, and organize the creation of the Holocaust memorials. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
[Note: This report was originally sent by Alex to the Rohatyn District Research Group.]