A project called Le Dor Va Dor is making inventories of Jewish cemeteries in Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Founded by young enthusiasts in 2007, it has catalogued more than 100,000 burial places, according to an interview with its Executive Director, Moti Sverdlov, which appears on the Global Jewish Voice web site.
When we started (almost 5 years ago) we didn’t even think about the geographical scale of the project. However, accurately [and] in 6 months we already had the catalogs of Kazan, Ulyanovsk and Moscow (partly). Our last-year goal had been to overcome the number of 100,000 cataloged burial places, which was successfully done. In our plans we have doubling this quantity [on our mind] and closing the main catalog of the biggest Russian cities with a Jewish population over 12,000 – 30,000 people. The primary objective of the project – the restoration and protection of Jewish cemeteries and mass graves throughout the former Soviet Union – is gradually being implemented […]
Our database currently contains information on more than 110,000 graves in 37 cemeteries all over the FSU; about 89% of the information about the graves in Russia is covered. If you do not find the grave of a relative, do not lose your hope – we are dealing with the remaining sections.