Adopt-a-Jewish-Cemetery project launched in Poland

The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ) has announced a new  “Adopt a Jewish Cemetery” initiative aimed at finding partners to commemorate family roots and Holocaust victims by helping maintain, mark or restore Jewish cemeteries in Poland.

“We invite individuals, families, groups, communities, and organizations who are interested in starting a commemoration project to partner with us,” FODZ said in a statement announcing the initiative.

Projects can be as small as designing and mounting a memorial plaque to remind visitors and locals that a particular site is a Jewish cemetery (even if no headstones exist there today) or as large as erecting a fence, gate, or elaborate lapidarium-style memorial. Our goal is to engage new partners who have been wanting to do something here in Poland to physically commemorate a place, a family, or a community but who have not known where to turn for advice and help on the logistics, paperwork, and details.

Under this arrangement, the announcement stated, FODZ could handle “legal, organizational, and practical matters”  in Poland. The outside partner  would be responsible for organizing “the project’s concept and financial support.”

FODZ  also told potential partners that it would be “available to assist when your project is completed, organizing the re-dedication ceremony, arranging speakers, participants, and representatives of the Polish and Jewish communities, as well as post-ceremony roots travel to other towns and cities in Poland relevant to your family heritage.”

There are about 1,200 Jewish cemeteries in Poland, most of them unmarked, abandoned, unfenced, and in an advanced state of neglect. Hundreds of them no longer have headstones — they were uprooted by the Nazis or removed under Communism and often used a construction material for roads, walls and even barns and houses.

FODZ  was established in 2002 by the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland and the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). Its primary mission is to protect and commemorate the surviving sites and monuments of Jewish cultural heritage in Poland. It operates primarily in areas of Poland where no Jewish community exists today or, it states,  “where distance from major urban centers or lack of sufficient financial resources makes it difficult for present-day small Jewish communities to provide adequate longterm care and maintenance of historic Jewish properties.”

FODZ has supervised work in 200 Jewish cemeteries in Poland, with projects in more than two dozen cemeteries in 2013-2014. Projects since 2002 have ranged from clean-up and repair initiatives, to elaborate fencing and gating projects, as well as the creation of monuments. Several projects culminated in high-profile re-dedication ceremonies. All of FODZ’s cemetery work is conducted under rabbinical supervision.

The current Jewish communities active today in Poland are responsible for cemeteries in their districts.

JTA runs a profile describing Anna Chipczynska, the recently elected president of the Warsaw Jewish Community, as “Warsaw’s Jewish Cemetery Defender” who “knows about vigilance when it comes to Polish Jewish cemeteries.” The article was published only days after  the Okopowa St. Jewish cemetery, Warsaw’ biggest Jewish cemetery was targeted by vandals.

Last fall, writes Penny Schwartz, Chipczynska  contrasted the gala celebration of the opening of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews with “the less glamorous, enormous responsibility her organization faces in preserving and maintaining the many Jewish cemeteries in cities and villages across Poland.”

Read the full JTA profile of Chipczynska

Read the full FODZ statement about Adopt-a-Jewish-Cemetery

Foundation for the Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland