Check out the new essay in our “Long(er) Reads” section — by Vitalii Kamozin, with additional commentary by Milton Koch. It’s about the ongoing initiative to install simple, uniform memorial monuments to mark the sites of Jewish cemeteries all over Ukraine.
There are more than 1,300 Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine, most of them unprotected, desecrated, built over, or bare plots whose matzevot were uprooted by the Nazis or under the Soviet regime for use as building material.
Kamozin, COO of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine (UJCU), heads the project, which was launched in 2021 and has continued even since the Russian invasion two years ago sparked the current ongoing war.
To date, writes Kamozin, some 122 markers have been installed — and he has permits to place 300 more. They are all black marble steles, with a star of David and inscriptions in Ukrainian, English, and Hebrew designating the site.
“We target cemeteries that are not protected by a fence, and also cemeteries that have been built over or have no gravestones,” Kamozin writes. “I am constantly traveling around the country to select the cemeteries where we want to place markers.”
In his commentary, Milton Koch, who lives in the United States, writes about his personal role in helping create a similar marker for the Jewish cemetery in his ancestral village, Zolotyi Potok, as well as his hopes to restore the Jewish cemetery there.
Click here to read the full essay and see pictures of some of the new markers