REMINDER: The Together Plan charity (TTP) is running a 36-hour crowd-funding campaign May 19-20 to finance the construction of a Holocaust memorial at the site of Jewish cemetery in Brest, Belarus (also called Brest-Litovsk). The monument will be built from the hundreds of matzevot that were rescued from around Brest over the past two decades and which have been piled up and stored for years.
So far, the TTP says, 50 percent of the £200,000 goal has been raised. The fundraiser this weekend aims to raise the remaining £100,000.
Designed by the American artist Brad J. Goldberg, the monument is an example of landscape art, with a broken circle of wall and walkway embracing a forest of around 600 re-erected matzevot. It will be built on land that was part of the destroyed cemetery.
A British NGO dedicated to Jewish community development in Belarus, the Together Plan is coordinating the monument project in collaboration with its partner organisation in the USA, Jewish Tapestry Project, the Religious Jewish Union of Belarus, and the international charitable organization Dialog in Belarus.
Work constructing the monument is expected to commence this summer. The project is being carried out in five e phases:
Around 26,000 Jews lived in Brest before the Holocaust. The Jewish cemetery was demolished by the Nazis in 1941-42 and then in the decades after World War II the Soviet authorities converted the site into the Lokomotiv stadium and playing field.
In recent years, more than 1,200 Jewish gravestones and fragments have surfaced around the city, used for construction or paving. As they surfaced they were rescued and piled up, awaiting funds to use them to create a Holocaust memorial. All stones and fragments have been documented and digitised.
Click here to see our October 2023 post about the memorial project
Click here to access the Together Plan web site and find out more