[Cz-L] Article about the latest SVIT Ukraine work-camp at the Jewish Cemetery in Czernowitz

Christian Herman wrote and published an article in German
about this year's SVIT Ukraine work-camp.
Those of you who read German can access the article at:
 http://www.ijab.de/vielfalt/erinnerungskultur/a/show/geschichte-ganz-nah/
The Article is accompanied by some photographs.

For those who do not read German, I translate part of it:

For the last five years, volunteer organizations have been engaged
in the maintenance of the Jewish cemetery of Czernowitz in the western
Ukraine.
Young people from the whole world, each summer, remove vines and undergrowt=
h
In an attempt to make the cemetery accessible.
It is hard physical work but it is possible to learn and experience much.

It becomes very quiet, when the volunteers from the Work-camp of SVIT
Ukraine,
enter the former synagogue of the rabbis of Sadagora. The path leads throug=
h
tall growing weeds and tottering planks to the interior.
They view the damaged frescoes, the leaking ceiling, rotten floor-boards.
Here, people once came to pray, now no one comes any more.
Chassidim from Israel have tried to save, whatever can be saved.
Now there are difficulties with the Ukrainian authorities,
the restoration work has stopped.
This fall it will again rain through the provisional roof,
In the winter, snow will fall on it. Whether this provisional roof will hol=
d
fast=20
depends on the harshness of the Ukrainian winter.

These moments of quiet, always occur during the excursions of the
volunteers.
They occur in the burned-out interior of the great synagogue, in the old
Jewish=20
quarter of Czernowitz, in front of the moss covered tombstones in the
cemetery
of Wiznitz and in front of the mass grave in the Jewish cemetery of
Czernowitz.
Where 900 people, killed during the first few days of the German and
Romanian=20
occupation in July 1941, were hastily buried.

Nearby there are memorial stones for those who were deported to ghettoes
and camps in Transnistria and died there.
In the villages and towns which the volunteers get to know, the wounds and
scars
are easily recognized; cemeteries gone wild, synagogues used for other
purposes,
 Jewish dwellings near collapse. A landscape after the nation-murder.
Diego, one of the volunteers, says: =B3Here, one can everywhere feel the
history=B2.=20

Both SVIT Ukraine and SCI Germany have now had work-camps at the Jewish
cemetery=20
in Czernowitz for five years. Aktion S=FChnezeichen Friedensdienste has done
the same=20
for 3 years. Encouraged by this, former Czernowitzers have formed an
organization,=20
to collect contributions with which to hire laborers (to clear the
cemetery).
Almost all parts of the cemetery, which measures 11 hectares have already
been cleared=20
once. (my comment: All parts of the cemetery have been cleared once.)
But on many of the areas, this is hardly believable. The soil of the
Bukovina is fertile
and the good climate allows bushes, grasses and vines to grow back quickly.
Only those who know the state of the cemetery before the beginning of the
work,=20
can see the difference.

Morning at 9:00 o=B9clock at the entrance to the cemetery.
Dr. Bursuk from the Jewish aid society Hessed Shushana, brings herbicide
material=20
to be used on the stumps of trees. A woman of middle-age approaches him,
speaks=20
for a long time to him in Russian and finally breaks into tears.
She has come from Israel, to take care of the graves of relatives in a
village near Czernowitz.
The cemetery in that village is so overgrown that it is inaccessible. She i=
s
looking for=20
experienced laborers.
.....=B2 Before we started, it looked the same way here.=B2 says Dr. Bursuk.
Tom Berman, who also arrived from Israel, does not have this problem.
The generation of his great-grandfathers is interred in Czernowitz.
The grave of Lazar Igel, the first rabbi of the great =B3Tempel=B2 of Czernowit=
z
=AD today a cinema.
Is in the immediate vicinity of the entrance to the cemetery.
The grave of the second great-grandfather is also easily found, it is in th=
e
area on which=20
The volunteers are currently working
Tom Berman is glad about the volunteers and they hang on his words, when in
the evening
in a Restaurant, he tells recounts.
=B3One sees the cemetery in another light, when one knows people, who have a
connection to it.=B2
Says Alena from the Czech Republic, =B3it adds something personal to the
experience.=B2 =20

I do not have time now to complete the translation. May be one of the other
German speaking
Members of the list, will volunteer to do so.

Mimi
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Received on 2012-08-29 19:24:55