Dear All,
My great thanks to Paula for having volunteered to work at the cemetery with
the other volunteers from ASF Germany and for keeping us informed. Not only
has she actually cleared part of the cemetery of weedy trees, bushes and
vines, but by being there among people who may not know very much about
Czernowitz and its Jewish heritage, she has shown them our appreciation and
has most probably also informed them of our culture.
600 graves out of 50 000 may not sound like much, but consider how much work
each person had to do. And it was very hot in Czernowitz.
If the group of older volunteers cleared 600 graves, the students probably
cleared another 900. In total about 1500 graves, or about 3% of all graves
at the cemetery and an estimated area of 0.3 - 0.5 hectares. In case you are
not familiar with hectares, one hectare is 10 000 square meter, or about 10
Dunam, or about 2.5 acres. This means that the volunteers of ASF cleared
between 3 and 5 Dunam or between 0.75 and 1.25 acres. Try to visualize
How very large an area this is.
SVIT Ukraine will hold another work-camp, later this month and they probably
will clear a comparably sized area.
We are moving ahead, "Rome was not built in one day", but I still hope that
we can clear the cemetery in one year.
Mimi
On 8/6/10 12:07 PM, "Paula Gris" <savtapaula_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Cz. friends, Last night I returned from Czernowitz and my
> participation in the clearing of the Jewish Cemetery from July 26
> until August 4. Yesturday, July 5, we all, university students and
> seniors, returned to our various places of residence. This was my
> first trip back to the place of my birth; upon reflection, I would not
> have wanted to return to Czernowitz any other way. The work was hard
> but purposeful, and while it was very hot as Zoya said, we got our
> inspiration from each other and from seeing the fruits of our labor.
> At last count we liberated nearly 600 matzevot, and that's not
> counting the the work done by the university students. I took many
> photographs and will gladly share some with the group after I download
> them to Picasa. I was there when Zoya brought her clients, an
> Israeli couple to the cemetery. They were surprised to find an
> American woman who could explain to them in Hebrew what was going on
> there, and they were visibly moved to witness the work and the
> results.
> Shabbat Shalom,
> Paula
>
>
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Received on 2010-08-06 12:43:07
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