The United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad has honored U.S. Representative Grace Meng (D-NY) for having sponsored a new law, the “Protect Cemeteries Act,” that makes the desecration of cemeteries a violation of religious freedom. Meng introduced the Protect Cemeteries Act this past February. It quickly passed the House and the Senate, and was signed into law In August by President Obama.
The Commission reports in a news release that it awarded Meng with its Cultural Heritage Preservation Award “for introducing the bill, which will help the agency in its work to protect and preserve cemeteries, monuments, and historic buildings that are associated with the heritage of U.S. citizens in Central and Eastern Europe.”
Many of these areas include sites that fell behind the Communist Iron Curtain after the Jewish communities were destroyed through the Holocaust. In these places, Jewish burial grounds were left uncared for and unprotected. Political instability and anti-Semitism in the region remain a threat to the graves.
“The Meng Act greatly strengthens the Commission’s ability on behalf of the U.S. Government to protect cemeteries in Central and Eastern Europe associated with the heritage of Americans,” said Commission Chair Lesley Weiss. “This legislation will preserve not only Jewish cemeteries, which have suffered from desecration and neglect, but also sacred sites of every American who traces their heritage to the region.”
The Commission, an independent agency of the U.S. Government based in Washington, D.C., was established in the late 1980s and works to identify, report on, and ensure the protection and preservation of cemeteries, monuments and buildings associated with the heritage of Americans in Eastern and Central Europe.
Among its accomplishments are a series of immensely important surveys of Jewish heritage sites in a number of countries in eastern and central Europe — the first full, post-Holocaust inventories of such sites.
It also has been active in promoting and organizing Holocaust memorials — the latest is the memorial at the site of the Jewish cemetery in the town of Serock, Poland, which was dedicated August 27, 2014.