Though the November 1-2 All Saints and All Souls Days — when Christians traditionally visit the graves of their loved ones — are not celebrated on the Jewish calendar, they were the occasion for special clean-ups and other actions at Jewish cemeteries in several places in Europe.
JTA runs a story about the annual clean-up operation at the neglected, 18th-century Währinger Jewish cemetery in Vienna, which this year attracted some 250 people, most of them non Jewish.
In Warsaw, as we noted in a previous post, the sprawling main Jewish cemetery on Okopowa street hosted guided tours on November 1 led by Jan Jagielski of the Jewish Historical Institute, a pioneer in the documentation of Jewish heritage sites in Poland and award-winning chairman of the Social Committee for Protecting Cemeteries and Monuments of Jewish Culture.
At the same time, the date was the focus of an annual fund-raising event at the cemetery, with prominent Jewish and non-Jewish personalities accepting donations.
Both the Vienna and Warsaw initiatives are annual events, which we have noted in the past.
Among other events this year were guided tours at the Jewish cemetery in Oswiecim, Poland — the town where the Auschwitz camp is located — led by a local historian.
The cemetery, which was established in the late 19th century, was devastated during World War II, but restored in the 1980s — the stones, which had been uprooted, were not set up, however in their original places.
The Christian, Atlanta-based Matzevah Foundation has been working on restoration and clean-up of the cemetery since 2013. This past August, it partnered in this project with the forensic archaeologist Dr. Caroline Sturdy-Colls, the Fundacja Zapomniane, the Auschwitz Jewish Center, and Action Reconciliation. As part of the project, a regional survey of Jewish cemeteries and mass killing sites in Oświęcim area and the Oświęcim Jewish cemetery was carried out.
“Using a wide range of techniques, the project team have documented the complete and fragmented matzevah in the cemetery, and recorded the above- and below-ground evidence of relating to the Nazi desecration of the area. This information will provide new insights into the nature of cultural and physical genocide at the site, provide a wealth of material for researchers interested in pre-war Jewish life and lead to the development of educational tools relating to Jewish heritage and the Holocaust.”