Maceva, the Litvak Jewish Cemetery Catalogue, reports that documentation of the Jewish cemetery in Seirijai, which was initiated last year, is practically completed.
The cemetery was cleaned and the remaining tombstones counted and photographed in August 2018 during the fourth annual international summer camp organized by Maceva, partially funded by the Jewish Community of Lithuania.
Maceva tells JHE that 692 gravestones were documented in the cemetery, and based on these findings a cemetery map was created.
Fully or partially legible inscriptions, it says, were found on the majority of matzevot — all written in Hebrew. The oldest burial with a legible inscription dates from 1789. The epitaphs have been transcribed and translated by Lara Lempert, the head of the Judaica Center at the National Library of Lithuania.
Maceva says that all the collected information will be analyzed and published on the Maceva website this year.
In addition, by the end of this year Maceva plans to transcribe and translate into English all the legible inscriptions of the Jewish cemeteries in Telsiai, Subacius and Valkininkai.
Maceva’s virtual Jewish cemetery database is accessible for a fee.
Work is being funded by the NGO Good Will Foundation, The Good Will Foundation was established in 2011 and receives compensation (totaling around €37,071,362) from the Lithuanian state budget to be used “for funding projects which deal with religious, cultural, health care, sports, educational and scientific goals pursued by Lithuanian Jews in Lithuania.” (Annual payments into the Foundation amount to around €3.6 million.)
Read why Maceva put its database behind a paywall