New Information Signs Installed at Rohatyn’s Jewish Mass Graves

After more than five months of development, with the important contributions of more than twenty friends and colleagues, and despite the practical difficulties created by Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, Marla and I are pleased to report that new information signs have been installed at both of Rohatyn’s Jewish mass grave memorial sites. As for the signs at the two Jewish cemeteries installed in spring of last year, the new signs were designed, fabricated, and installed by ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, using text and graphics provided by Rohatyn Jewish Heritage (RJH) and by individual members of the Rohatyn District Research Group (RDRG). We participated in the installation of both signs in the sweltering heat in Rohatyn last Friday, and we are very satisfied with the results; we hope these new signs will last for many years.

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Both mass grave sites already have memorial markers with brief text. The first monuments were installed in the late Soviet era and only remember “victims of fascism” without mention that all of those victims were Jewish. Concise texts on monuments installed by Jewish survivors and descendants living abroad in 1998 declare the killing dates and the approximate number of victims, in three languages: Ukrainian, English, and Hebrew.

The new signs expand the textual and graphical information about the history of these heritage sites and about the Jewish communities which were destroyed, both from Rohatyn and from nearby towns and villages who were forced into the Rohatyn wartime ghetto before their murders at these outlying locations. The new signs are also trilingual (Ukrainian, English, and Hebrew); one of our goals with all of the information signs, as with the permanent exhibition on the Jewish community at the Rohatyn Opillya local history museum, is to provide sufficient context and detail so that visitors to the sites from different cultural backgrounds can appreciate the prewar lives of Jews in the Rohatyn region and their participation in what was then a multicultural milieu. The new texts also emphasize that although the victims buried in these graves died in violence, the sites are cemeteries in Jewish tradition and remain holy to Jews forever; this helps to create a sense of shared heritage – which leads to better site care.

Prewar photographs of Rohatyn and area Jews at a school, in a park, and at photographers’ studios prompt an immediate visual recognition of the Jewish communities as integral to the local civil communities. Wartime aerial photographs dated a year after the liquidation of the ghetto show the scars on the land where the mass burials took place. Recent photographs of commemorations at the grave sites illustrate a continuing commitment to remember those who were lost. The images also serve as an attractor, to encourage passersby to approach these otherwise grim sites. On both signs, the images are accompanied by a map of Rohatyn we created to show the locations of other Jewish and non-Jewish physical heritage sites in the city.

Following the current ESJF sign format and similar to the signs at the Rohatyn cemeteries, the new signs are 1.5 meters wide by 1.0 meter high, mounted on a steel frame at eye level. Below the sign titles, the graphics gallery, and the informational texts, at the base of the signs are the names and logos of key institutional supporters of this project, plus QR codes linked to the RJH website for much greater information about the mass grave sites and about Rohatyn’s lost Jewish community.

As is often the case in our work in Rohatyn, many hands and hearts came together in difficult times to bring this project to completion. The texts and maps were created by RJH, then translated to Ukrainian by Natalya Kurishko, Vasyl Yuzyshyn, and Iryna Nebesna, and to Hebrew by Rohatyn descendant Ruthy Erez. Other Jewish descendants contributed the photos of Rohatyn women, men, and children in their daily lives, including members of the Steinmetz family, the Faust and Rothen families, the Glotzer and Barban families, the Hornstein and Horn families, and the Lichtgarn and Siegel families. Marla and I contributed photos from recent commemorations, and Dr. Alexander Feller contributed aerial images of the two grave sites taken by the Luftwaffe in 1944.

Like for the earlier cemetery signs (and many of our physical heritage projects), practical site planning support was provided by our RJH colleague Vasyl Yuzyshyn, and overall concept review and site installation approval was managed by the Rohatyn city administration including architecture department head Stepan Demchyshyn and deputy mayor Mykola Shynkar.

ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, an important heritage protection and preservation organization active in Europe since 2015 (and a partner of RJH for years), made swift work of turning our concept and content into reality even while their team is scattered due to the ongoing war and due to active project work in several countries this summer. Our project benefits from association with their network of information signs placed at Jewish cemeteries where they have also constructed perimeter fences and done other forms of heritage preservation work. As before, Alexandra Fishel remotely managed the overall project and the coordination of resources, with key in-country guidance from office director Alexander Bessarab and from ESJF CEO Philip Carmel. ESJF’s graphic designer Taras Mosienko again adapted our concepts to visually-clear and appealing layouts. Manpower shortages due to the war complicated work at ESJF’s printer and with their installation crews this year, but with the problem-solving help of several past and current ESJF staff (all of them friends of ours from other circles), the delivery and installation schedule for the signs was expedited.

In Lviv, Olena (Helen) Kolb and her husband Oleksandr (Sasha) Kolb received and organized the printed sign panels and the metal framework pieces, and then Sasha prepared the frames for quick assembly at the sites and painted the metalwork for color and protection from the elements. On Friday we joined Sasha in Rohatyn to identify the precise locations for installation near the memorial monuments (and away from the physical grave boundaries themselves), and to help out in small ways during the work. Overall the installations took eight hours at the height of summer heat, including final sign assembly, digging holes for the frame posts to be anchored in concrete, mixing the concrete and adding stones, plus careful leveling and a final paint touch-up to the frame. The post holes were sunk 40~50cm each; we encountered only tree roots at the south site and only underground construction rubble at the north site. Sasha remained remarkably cheerful despite the heat and the heavy work, for which we are very grateful.

Together with the cemetery signs which have now been installed for sixteen months (and still look very good), we will monitor the signs during the coming years to see how they endure, and learn from this project to inform sign designs for other heritage sites. We thank our donors for helping us fund this important project, and especially ESJF, the City of Rohatyn, our colleagues and supporters, and Rohatyn Jewish descendants for their contributions and encouragement since our efforts in Ukraine began.