On the occasion of his visit Tuesday (April 5) to the newly fenced Jewish cemetery in Frampol, southeastern Poland, Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland has published a strong op-ed decrying “a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism across our nations” and pledging CoE support to efforts to protect Jewish (and other) cemeteries in Europe.
His words make a powerful public statement — and, indeed, echo the words of the late Pope John Paul II, who on a visit to his native Poland in 1997 made an urgent plea for Jews and Poles to work together to preserve Jewish cemeteries.
John Paul — now revered as a Roman Catholic saint — said, speaking in the town of Kalisz:
The Jewish cemeteries, which are so numerous on Polish soil, speak of this common past. Such a cemetery is here in Kalisz. These places are of particularly deep spiritual, eschatological and historical significance. Let these places join Poles and Jews, as we are together awaiting the day of Judgement and Resurrection…
As we reported earlier, Jagland was visiting the Frampol Jewish cemetery Tuesday to show general support for Jewish cemetery preservation and specific support to efforts of the German-funded European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF), which works to protect Jewish burial grounds in Central and Eastern Europe.
In an op-ed published in the Jerusalem Post he wrote:
The loss of Jewish cemeteries on European soil is a problem. And not just for historians or the descendants of the deceased, but for all those who value tolerant and inclusive societies.
Europe’s Anti-Racism Committee recently reported a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism across our nations. Many Jews living here continue to leave in order to begin new lives in Israel, America and elsewhere, rather than stay and watch old prejudices grow.
We must step up efforts to ensure that Europe is a place where all Jewish people feel at home. The vanishing of burial sites is a far cry from the “never forget” maxim repeated at Holocaust memorials every year. I was fortunate enough to attend the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army; such large-scale events are moving and vital. Recent years have also seen a number of impressive new Jewish museums emerge, notably in Munich and Warsaw. But, for most of us, history is best absorbed by osmosis: through the local culture and heritage we come into contact with in our everyday lives. These burial grounds are a physical reminder of Europe’s long and proud Jewish lineage. They force us to confront painful but important questions about our shared past.
The Council of Europe – the continent’s human rights watchdog – will therefore lend its support to an ambitious project, run by the ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative and funded, in part, by the German government, to protect the thousands of burial sites across Central and Eastern Europe.
He urged that this sort of protection be extended to other sites of religious heritage.
The Frampol example can and should be applied across different faiths. Many mosques and churches have also suffered vandalism and neglect. This is no good in a Europe where populism and xenophobia are becoming troublingly commonplace. I am neither Jewish nor Muslim, but I am a believer in open and diverse nations. Democracy is my creed and the rich patchwork of religious and cultural sites adorning the continent is thus my – and your – heritage too.
Fencing and protecting Jewish cemeteries is only one of the issues involved in the care of these sites — restoring and cleaning up and maintaining the sites in an ongoing fashion is often more complex that building a fence.
Read, for example, Dr. Michael Lozman’s “Have Your Say” op-ed on Jewish Heritage Europe in which he details the process by which he restored more than a dozen cemeteries.
Many, many issues related to Jewish cemetery preservation were addressed in October at a conference on European Jewish cemeteries that took place in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Read a report on this conference, and see some of the presentations
Read the full op-ed by CoE chief Jagland