Two meetings in the past ten days have helped us make a formal start on our effort to better preserve and protect the Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust mass graves in Rohatyn. At present, none of the cemeteries or mass grave sites in Rohatyn are recognized as objects of regional or Ukrainian national heritage, and thus the four sites lack formal…
A crew of four volunteers from Sasha Nazar’s Lviv Volunteer Center joined us in Rohatyn yesterday at the new Jewish cemetery to do some much-needed clearing and cutting of waist-high wild vegetation. The work at the site began a little after 10:00 am and lasted seven hours. In addition to cutting back new growth, and clearing a corner of the…
Jay and I were in Rohatyn with friends yesterday to mark the 75th anniversary of the final Nazi aktion which liquidated the wartime Jewish ghetto. Once at the “vodokanal” north mass grave site, gathered around the memorial marker erected in 1998 by Jewish survivors and descendants of Rohatyn, our long-time friend and supporter Rabbi Kolesnik of Ivano-Frankivsk recited a prayer…
This week we participated in a conference on “Civil Society, Digital Storytelling and 20th Century Jewish History in Ukraine“, and led a tour of heritage sites in Rohatyn for about 25 educators from Ukraine, Moldova, Germany and Poland. The three-day conference was hosted and managed by Vienna-based Centropa though their Trans.History education program for teachers and civil society activists in…
The Jewish genealogy research organization focused on the former Austrian crownland of Galicia, Gesher Galicia, has dedicated the entire March 2018 edition of their quarterly journal The Galitzianer to the people and places of Rohatyn. And, very fortunately for us and anyone with an interest in Rohatyn, Gesher Galicia has generously allowed us to present the complete edition of the…
Thanks to an introduction by Mykhailo Vorobets, last week Marla and I were able to interview a former manager of the “vodokanal” site in Rohatyn where the Jewish mass graves from the June 1943 aktion are located. The discussion took place at the site, where we were shown the specific places where human remains were discovered more than thirty years…
This is an informal annual report for Rohatyn Jewish Heritage (RJH) for the calendar year 2017, in essence a year-in-review summary of our project progress and events, with an outline of our finances as well. The summary seems long, but (for us, at least) it helps to organize the sometimes chaotic mix of activities we had this past year. It’s…
For nine days from late May to early June, Rohatyn Jewish Heritage commissioned a non-invasive professional archaeology survey at WW2-era Jewish mass grave sites in Rohatyn. The 80-page final report by the Centre of Archaeology from Staffordshire University is now online. Within the surveyed areas, two mass grave boundaries were detected and defined (one at each location, north and south),…
Rohatyn Jewish Heritage participated on December 11, 2017 in a follow-up roundtable titled “Saving Jewish Cultural Heritage”. The roundtable was held at the office of the Honorary Consul of Israel in Lviv, where earlier this year a first roundtable was convened to review local Jewish heritage projects, and to exchange strategies for meeting challenges faced in cities and towns to…
We are pleased to announce that the old Jewish cemetery in Rohatyn has been designated a joint clearing project for 2018 by Rohatyn Jewish Heritage (RJH) and our friends at The Matzevah Foundation (TMF). Last month the board of TMF met to review their projects in Poland in 2017 and to begin planning for 2018, and the board voted to…