[Cz-L] Cemetery Restoration

Greetings,

I will throw in my two cents, so to speak. To my knowledge I have no family
 from Czernowitz, but having been to many cemeteries over the past number of
years to help grow my site's Cemetery Project, I feel I can offer some
advice, so probably much of it may be obvious to most. I am also involved in
my paternal grandfather's landsmanshaft society that, believe it or not, has
more than one hundred members--a rarity for landsmanshaftn nowadays.

As a member and First Vice-President of the United Zembrover Society, during
our previous two annual meetings, we've had to discuss how to spend our
monies. Do we spend some of it to have our Zambrow Yizkor book translated
into English, or do we spend money in fixing up and maintaining our small
Jewish cemetery in Zambrow (only a small number of extant matzevot). This
would have included mapping it out, fencing it in, cleaning it up and most
importantly in the end maintaining it. For now, we decided to spend money on
translating the Yizkor book into English.

Now I am not saying not to establish a committee or organization that would
be responsible for the renovation of the Czernowitz cemetery. On the
contrary, I think it's a great idea. After all, though overgrown with
vegetation, etc., I understand that the Czernowitz cemetey is filled with
extant matzevot, and this is a blessing.

My main concerns would be to find someone who lives in Czernowitz that I
know and could trust and would be willing to take on the responsibility of
finding the proper workers and monitoring the work as it progresses
properly; someone who would report back to the cemetery committee in regular
intervals, perhaps sending a written report and a number of representative
photos of the work that would show the committee not only its progress, but
what problems in may face as the work proceeds. There is nothing like
knowing you have someone so many miles away that you can trust, that having
the proper work done is (almost) as important to them as it is to all of
you.

We will pay a portion of the full fee to our translator of our Zambrow
Yizkor book. Then when he completes the translation and submits it, and all
looks in order, we will pay him another amount for a pre-arranged amount of
translation. I'm not sure of the scope of what you propose re the cemetery
renovation, but perhaps you will pay the person in charge in Czernowitz a
certain amount at the beginning based on the amount of work that is promised
to you that will get done by a certain date. If you have/had a decent map of
the Czernowitz cemetery, and they had the same copy, you could divide up the
cemetery into sections, and do one part at a time, doling out the money as
you go.

As I alluded to earlier, let's say at some point in the future you have
renovated the grounds so that the cemetery's appearance meets with your
satisfaction. Now the question is, how will you maintain it? It will not
take long for the weeds and other unseemly vegetation to grow back. So then
you need a maintenance fund, one that will be paid out as need be on a
periodic basis to someone again that you can trust, who will report back to
you and take photos of their completed work (Hopefully when the work is
initially completed, or even when a section is completed, someone will be
able to digitally photograph every matzeva so every inscription can be read,
send it perhaps to Bruce and Jerome so they can be posted on their site).

Now these funds for maintenance must be enough, in theory, that it exists in
perpetuity. It would be nice if the balance always remained and you could
pay maintenance from the interest accrued--but probably this is wishful
thinking, probably because there won't be enough principal to accrue that
much interest, and also that the interest rates are pretty bad nowadays.
Whatever the case, my point is that just cleaning up and renovating the
cemetery is one thing, but it must be maintained (preferably yearly) or else
the initial renovation will be for naught after a short number of years. One
must assume that costs for maintaining the cemetery will increase over time,
but nevertheless, funds must exist that will pay for maintenance care of the
cemetery for many years to come. In the absence of this, one then can only
hope for a full renovation of the cemetery, many, many, photos of every
matzevot and a full mapping of where every burial is located, and that
everybody who wishes to visit the cemetery while it is clean, etc., will do
so while it is still in 'pristine' condition.

Anyway, that is my two cents. Thanks for listening. I've made hundreds of
cemetery visits over the past five years, seen some really well-kept
cemeteries, seen some that remind me of a jungle. I think it's really
important to treat our dead properly. That Czernowitzers and their
descendants have the opportunity to renovate the sacred resting place of
their family members is a blessing; the completion of such a task would be
something that each of you who contribute to could be extremely proud of.


Best,
Steve Lasky
steve725_at_optonline.net
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com
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Received on 2009-03-24 14:35:08