With the arrival of autumn and the cool, wet weather it brings to western Ukraine, this week Rohatyn Jewish Heritage team member Vasyl Yuzyshyn made what is likely his final working visit to Rohatyn’s Jewish cemeteries for the year. Since May, Vasyl has cleared vegetation for us at the two sites nearly two dozen days, usually alone but sometimes joined…
Our Lviv-based friends Vasyl Yuzyshyn and Sasha Nazar of the Lviv Volunteer Center of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Charitable Foundation “Hesed-Arieh” were in Rohatyn again yesterday, helping us by cutting and clearing wild vegetation at the old Jewish cemetery. Ця стаття також доступна українською. While they were working, a neighbor came over to alert them to Jewish headstone fragments she had…
Despite travel and meeting restrictions during the current global pandemic, we are pleased to report this week that volunteers have completed a first round of cutting and clearing wild vegetation at Rohatyn’s two Jewish cemeteries. Unusually wet weather with many days of storm and rain through the spring and summer to date forced the work to extend much longer than…
The results of my 2019-2020 Fulbright project are now online and available to the public on a new website: “A Guide to Jewish Cemetery Preservation in Western Ukraine”. Ця стаття також доступна українською. Though initially more narrowly defined as a demonstration project for Jewish cemetery preservation in the region using Rohatyn’s “old” Jewish cemetery as example, it became clear once…
Due to the worldwide pandemic, Jay and I were unable this year to physically stand beside the memorial at the “vodokanal” Jewish mass grave site in Rohatyn to recite a prayer of remembrance for the more than 3,000 Jewish victims of the final liquidation of Rohatyn’s wartime Jewish ghetto on the anniversary. Instead, sheltering in place in northern California, we…
Earlier this month, a Rohatyn resident uncovered more than half a dozen Jewish headstone fragments during a DIY home repair project. As he pulled building stones and rubble from the walls of an old cellar, Oleh Yefimovych was startled to turn over seven of the removed building-block-sized pieces to see Hebrew lettering and ornamental markings typical of Jewish headstones. His…
Although the planned public gathering at the south mass grave in Rohatyn was canceled due to the worldwide virus pandemic, yesterday Jay and I traveled to Rohatyn and intimately observed a sad anniversary: 78 years since more than 3,000 Jews of Rohatyn were executed en masse in the first and deadliest Nazi aktion of the war. Half of the victims…
Jay and I joined five volunteers from the Lviv Volunteer Center (LVC) working in a steady rain this week to recover more than 50 Jewish headstone fragments from a crumbling residential retaining wall in Lviv; the wall had been partially built from Jewish headstones, apparently during the post-war Soviet period. A single headstone visible in the wall after part of…
This is a descriptive annual report for Rohatyn Jewish Heritage (RJH) covering the calendar year 2019 – in essence a year-in-review summary of our project progress and events, with an outline of our finances as well. To compare our progress in 2019 to our forecast of a year ago, see also our report for 2018. Most elements of this review…
This week Marla and I led a small volunteer event in Rohatyn, continuing the vegetation clearing and conditioning work in the old Jewish cemetery following several larger volunteer events earlier this year. As usual we were joined by friends and colleagues, but only a few this time so we could focus on a small number of specific tasks which did…