As readers know, a main focus of articles on this News Feed and indeed throughout the JHE web site is the status and fate of Jewish cemeteries across Europe.
The Lo-Tishkach database includes more than 11,000 Jewish cemeteries and mass graves in Europe. In central and eastern Europe in particular, but also elsewhere, they are, for the most part, abandoned and neglected.
We are happy to note this article by Suzanne Selengut in Tablet Magazine, which highlights the interest and involvement of the German photographer and JHE friend Christian Herrmann — his photographic work documenting Jewish heritage sites, and in particular his work in cooperation with volunteer organizations — Germany’s Action Reconciliation Service for Peace and SVIT Ukraine to clear and maintain the vast Jewish cemetery in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.
It recounts:
After Herrmann’s visit to the city, he joined an online group for people concerned with its Jewish history and connected with Miriam Taylor, a lab technician from Indiana who left Chernivtsi (then called Cernauti) in 1945, after a traumatic wartime childhood. Herrmann learned of the group’s concern about the overgrown 12-hectare cemetery, which Taylor has described as “an impenetrable jungle.” The municipality was supposed to maintain the cemetery two days a week, but most of the local manpower went to caring for the Christian cemetery. In addition, some locals were seriously overcharging tourists to locate family graves.
Herrmann, who works for an umbrella organization of European volunteer groups, offered a list of several such groups to which the Czernovitzers might apply for help. Taylor chose SVIT Ukraine and Germany’s Action Reconciliation Service for Peace. The groups sent small delegations of volunteers in 2008 and 2009, respectively. At the same time, Taylor began working with the city council to get additional help with the heavier work, such as using power saws to cut large branches. According to Taylor, the first group of volunteers, composed mostly of college-age Europeans, were enthusiastic and enterprising, even rallying locals to help out with the cleanup. Herrmann accompanied the group and offered the young volunteers historical background about their surroundings. The cleanups (known colloquially as work camps) have gone on to become a tradition in the city. To date, SVIT Ukraine has held nine sessions, while Action Reconciliation Service for Peace has sent seven delegations.
The article goes on to describe the impact of such involvement on participants.
As for Christian Herrmann, today — January 30 — an exhibition of his photographs opened in Berlin. The exhibition offers a description of every photo with background information, which you can download – in German only – as a PDF file.
And, as we noted in December, you can still download and print, for free, the 2017 calendar Christian has produced from his photos.
Click to read the full Tablet Magazine article
Click here to access Christian Herrmann’s blog Vanished World