Ukraine: New Memorial Monuments Are Installed to Mark Jewish Cemeteries in Ukraine — Even in Wartime

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 Soviets for use as building material.  Since 2021, the United Jewish Community of Ukraine (UJCU) has run a project to place simple memorials at Jewish cemeteries all over the country. To date, more than 120 markers have been installed, many of them placed even in the two years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked the ongoing war. The project is coordinated by Vitalii Kamozin, the UJCU’s Chief Operating Officer. Other cemetery markers are also being placed by individuals.

In this essay, Kamozin, based in Dnipro, describes the monuments project (and provides the pictures), with comments also by Milton Koch, who has been independently organizing a monument at the cemetery in his ancestral village.

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New Memorial Monuments Are Installed to Mark Jewish Cemeteries Across Ukraine — Even in Wartime

By Vitalii Kamozin (with further comments by Milton Koch)

March 7, 2024

Jewish cemeteries are sacred places. In Ukraine, they are direct evidence of the huge Jewish community that once existed here. Scattered around the country, they are also monuments of Jewish art, reflecting the culture of the shtetl of its time.

It would be incredibly difficult – and incredibly expensive – to fence or otherwise physically protect all cemeteries (though we cooperate with the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, ESJF, which is making a start).

This is why, on my initiative, the United Jewish Community of Ukraine (UJCU) is implementing a program to protect them in a simple way – by marking them with a memorial monument: a uniform black marble stele with a star of David and an inscription in Ukrainian, English, and Hebrew that identifies the site as a Jewish cemetery.

We target cemeteries that are not protected by a fence, and also cemeteries that have been built over or have no gravestones. I am constantly traveling around the country to select the cemeteries where we want to place markers.

In total, since 2021, about 122 markers have been installed in all regions of Ukraine, except for the occupied territories in the east. We already have 300 permits to designate other unprotected cemeteries.  I always look for work crews on site to install the markers; and either the closest Jewish communities or local historians and activists help me with this.

The markers not only commemorate the Jewish community, but it also have a cultural and historical function, as the younger generation no longer knows that there was once a Jewish community in their locality.

On some — for example the marker in Gornostaypol, Kyiv region, which was installed in February with the help of historian Pavel Zeldich — we are now starting to inscribe information on the reverse of the markers about the Jewish population in different years and how many were killed there in the Holocaust.

According to official documentation, Jewish cemeteries as a rule do not belong to anyone today; they are simply located on public land, which is assigned by default to territorial communities. But nothing is formalized; there are no cadastral boundaries and numbers.

Our markers are installed with permission from local authorities, and I have to negotiate with them to get the permits. But despite the fact that local authorities categorically do not want to take over old cemeteries and care for them installing a marker means that the existence of a cemetery is at least somehow documented. Even if in most places few matzevot remain.

The marker recently installed in Gornostaypol, for example, is on the site of a cemetery built over by a village council building and a club. It bears a list detailing the size of the Jewish community over nearly 200 years, as well as how many local Jews were killed in the Shoah.

We marked similarly built-over cemeteries in Tlumach and Tisminitsa (Ivano-Frankivsk region), in Ivano-Frankivsk itself, and elsewhere. In Tatariv, seventy percent of the cemetery is built over by a school, and on the remaining part there are only three matzevot left. Cemeteries plowed over and used as agricultural land are marked in Sychavka (Odessa region), and the Bogodarovka colony, Zaporozhye region.

There are cemeteries, too, where there is simply nothing left, only our monument. This is the case, for example, in Trokhinbrod – the one-time shtetl made famous in the book and movie “Everything Is Illuminated” – where markers were dedicated last month (February 2024) at the sites of the two obliterated Jewish cemeteries.

The mere fact of placing the markers has prevented some cemeteries from undergoing further damage. We have evidence that placing a marker has stopped individuals from seizing the site and using the land for their own purposes.

When we learned about a case in Lanchin, Ivano-Frankivsk region, where the takeover of a cemetery had already began, for example, we promptly received permission and installed a memorial marker there, stopping the attempt. Similarly in Khorol, Poltava region, installing a marker allowed us to halt workers who had begun to excavate at the site with heavy machinery.

The project is financed by my fundraising within Ukraine, mainly through negotiations with businessmen who support the protection of cemeteries.

There are also cases when a marker is financed by a family of descendants who come from a particular place, or by others. Some markers at Jewish cemeteries pre-date our project; others are personal initiatives by descendants. I note the funders and helpers on my Facebook page, when I post pictures of the markers with the history of  the Jewish communities. (And see a Times of Israel blog recounting a personal story about placing a marker in the village of Botvino )  

NOTE: If you want to find out about the condition of the cemetery where your ancestors are buried and/or contribute to marking it — or other cemeteries — with a memorial sign, please write to me at director@jew.org.ua.

Vitalii Kamozin is the Chief Operating Officer of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine. Follow his Facebook page to get up to date information as the memorial markers are installed.   

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One independent marker project is spearheaded by Milton Koch, a descendant of Jews from the village Zolotyi Potik, in the Ternopil oblast. The marker, similar to those erected by Kamozin’s UJCU  project, is ready, and is to be dedicated with a ceremony this spring.

Koch also has long-term hopes of restoring the cemetery and digitizing the matzevot.  He lives in the U.S., has never visited the cemetery, and is carrying out his project long-distance and based on photographs.

Koch told JHE that he became interested by chance, after seeing a February 2020 Facebook post by Marla Raucher Osborn, of Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, who visited the Jewish cemetery in Zolotyi Potik (known in Polish as Potok Złoty) and wondered what would become of the cemetery and the scattered fragments of its matzevot.

Her post “piqued my interest,” Koch writes.

My father was born in Potok, but left as a child, to live in Vienna, with his parents. However, I am aware of at least one of his cousins and uncles and their family who remained in Potok.

Upon seeing and reading Marla’s posting, I wanted to preserve this hallowed ground and hope to identify who is buried there by cleaning up the older matzevot, trying to re-assemble some of the broken ones, take pictures of them all, in order to post them on various web sites, with the hope that families will be identified. Unfortunately, there are no known documents listing the burials or the locations of various gravesites within the cemetery.

It seems that many gravestones are either gone, sunken into the ground or broken. They are also used as steps at the local castle.

In view of these concerns, as well as worrying that many fragments that are lying around town might be discarded, I am in the process, along with others who are descendants of Potok families, of hiring people to safely clean old stones, try to piece together larger fragments, and preserve obvious pieces of matzevot within the cemetery grounds.

My ultimate goal is to have all the stones, etc., photographed, put on-line for all to view. Ideally, many families will recognize names and dates to be able to honor their deceased relatives and learn about extended families from Potok. This undertaking will be a slow process, but certainly worthwhile, in the quest to preserve the Jewish heritage of Galicia and its many small shtetls.

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NOTE: If you have questions or want further information, you may contact Milton Koch at mjk1944@gmail.com