The Jewish cemetery in the historic town of Levoča, Slovakia has been cleaned up thanks to the initiative of a local Catholic youth organization, Spoločenstvo Pavol (SP), a member of the Slovak Association of Christian Youth Movements (ZKSM).
SP received support from ZKSM, the Union of Slovak Jewish Communities, and the Town of Levoča to enable them to clear the site of rubbish, and to tidy it up.
The Slovak Jewish Heritage database states that the cemetery, founded in the 19th century, includes about 30 standing stones and about 60 fragments. The inscriptions are in Hebrew, Slovak, Hungarian and German. A fence around the cemetery was put up by the town about 10 years ago, but the site remained neglected: a blogger who visited in the site in 2015 found it in devastated condition, with some of the graves dug up.
David Conway, an Englishman who divides his time between Levoča and London, tells JHE that now “the site is mostly in decent shape, but it needs some repairs and a new gate.”
Here’s a video the young people posted about their clean-up efforts:
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