Jewish heritage activists in Ukraine have launched a web site with databases aimed at creating an online searchable archive of Jewish headstones that have been uprooted from their original places in selected Jewish cemeteries in western Ukraine.
Called Jewish Stones UA , (https://jewishstonesua.org/), the site currently includes information for the towns of Dobromyl, Rohatyn, Sokal, and Zbarazh.
The database is a joint project of the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Cultural Society of Lviv and Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, with the aid of other volunteers.
The aim is to document “displaced Jewish headstones at cemeteries and other locations ” in western Ukraine.
The majority of Jewish cemetries in western Ukraine were partially or completely stripped of their stone grave markers (matzevot) during the German occupation of the region in World War II and in some cases also during the postwar Soviet occupation. These actions were intended not only to “harvest” the headstones for use as building materials but also as a form of cultural genocide , to intentionally erase visual signs of Jewish culture after the Jewish communities tied to those cemeteries had been destroyed in the Holocaust. Today many of these cemeteries retain few or no surviving matzevot, not even broken stones.
The databases list stones that have been recovered but for which there is no information as to where they would have been sited in the cemeteries.
Some have been found in towns and brought back to the sites of the destroyed cemeteries, some have been used to create memorials.
The documentation for each stone includes a photograph and “almost 30 characteristics,” such as name and dates for the deceased, the epitaph and its translation, date and place where it was recovered, current location, dimension of the stones, etc.
Most data can be accessed in English, Hebrew, and Ukrainian.