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| Europe |
| Jewish remains dug up in Belarus to be sent to dumps |
| 2008-04-12 |
| If you're Jewish you better put your coffee down and run the kids out of the house. I'm not even going to sprinkle snark throughout this article. Belarus' attitude kind of takes care of this for me. Workers rebuilding a sports stadium on the site of an 18th century Jewish cemetery in Belarus say they have no choice but to consign the bones to city dumps. "It's impossible to pack an entire cemetery into sacks," said worker Mikhail Gubets, adding that he stopped counting the skulls when the number went over 100. But critics say it's part of a pattern of callous indifference toward Belarus' Jewish heritage that was prevalent when the country was a Soviet republic and hasn't changed. The stadium in Gomel, Belarus' second largest city and a center of Jewish life until World War II, is one of four that were built on top of Jewish cemeteries around the country. The Gomel cemetery was destroyed when the stadium was built in 1961, but the remains lay largely undisturbed until this spring when reconstruction began and a bulldozer turned up the first bones. A Jewish leader in Gomel, Vladimir Gershanok, says he asked the builders to put the bones into sacks for reburial at a cemetery that has a monument to Holocaust victims. "We know we can't stop the construction but we're trying to minimize the destruction," Gershanok said. But city authorities have ruled that the construction can go ahead because the bones are more than 50 years old. Igor Poluyan, the city official responsible for building sports facilities, says he doesn't understand the problem. "If something was scattered there, we'll collect it and take it away," he said. A history professor, Yevgeny Malikov, sees the cemetery as part of the city's heritage. He has filled three sacks with bones and pulled aside two of the unearthed marble gravestones. Other gravestones are piled near a trash bin or already carried away. Some of the bones have been carried off by stray dogs. "The history of the city is being thrown into the dump together with the human remains," Malikov said. Jews began settling in Gomel in the 16th century and by the end of the 19th century made up more than half of the population. In 1903, they made history by being the first to resist a pogrom, defending 26 synagogues and prayer houses. Most of Gomel's 40,000 Jews managed to flee before the Nazis arrived. The 4,000 who remained were shot in November 1941. Only a few thousand Jews now live in the city of 500,000. Oleg Korzhuyev, 38, who lives on Karl Marx Street at the edge of the site, said the workers aren't happy about digging up human bones, "but if they find a gold tooth then it's a real celebration." Another city, Grodno, experienced a similar problem while reconstructing a stadium built on a Jewish cemetery. The excavated earth and bones were scattered into a ravine. Jewish graves also have been disturbed in neighboring Ukraine. "It's not just a Jewish issue, it's this general Soviet legacy," said Ukraine's chief rabbi. Yakov Blaikh. "They didn't respect people while they were alive and they don't respect them when they are dead." This month, the Jewish community in the city of Vinnyntsa was able to stop construction of an apartment building on a pre-World War II Jewish cemetery. Ukrainian authorities apologized, saying they did not realize the construction would affect the cemetery. Belarus, on the other hand, has been "one of the least responsive countries on all Jewish issues," according to Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israeli Simon Wiesenthal Center. "The government is simply erasing Jewish history from the face of this land," said Yakov Basin, vice president of the Belarusian Jewish Council. Before the war, about 1 million Jews lived in Belarus and 800,000 of them died in the Holocaust. Today they number 27,000 in the country of 10 million. Belarus' president, Alexander Lukashenko, has shown little respect for Jewish culture. In a radio broadcast in October that provoked a sharp protest from the Israeli government, he suggested that when Jews were numerous in another town, Bobruisk, they turned it into "a pigsty." "You know how Jews treat the place where they live. Look at Israel; I was there," he said. No need to advertise your ignorance, Lukashenko. |
| Posted by:gorb |
| #5 trailing wife: I am afraid you are correct. Where there is no respect for life, one can hardly expect respect for the dead. The cemetery was not built by those who despoiled it, it was built by those who cherished and honored their dead, and their memory. In fact, I am surprised that any foreign reporter would learn of such a thing, under such a bitter and repressive regime. But I am not surprised by the nature of the defilement. In many places it is the rule, not the exception. Hundreds of shtetls existed for years in Europe and Asia, then were obliterated, with not a stone left to suggest that they ever existed. Often side by side with a European or Slavic town that did not mourn its passing, and maybe even joined in its destruction. For any reason, or none. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-04-12 21:53 |
| #4 Anonymoose, a year after the battle of Cold Harbour during the US Civil War the skeletons were still on the battlefield. They, however, were collected and burried in a proper cemetary. The callousnes of the Belarus is not surprizinf to me. There are still Soviet and German unburried dead there. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2008-04-12 21:03 |
| #3 In other words, this is standard operating procedure. Had an AP reporter not passed by, none but the construction workers and the Jews of Gomel would ever know. Yitgadal v'yitkadash Sh'mai rabbah. Magnified and sanctified is the name of the Lord. /the beginning of the Jewish prayer in remembrance of those who died. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-04-12 18:34 |
| #2 There has never been great respect for bones of any culture or religion. The very idea of the ossuary, or chapel decorated with human bones, came from the "recycling" of cemetery grounds. This is doubly so in Asia, as, for over two thousand years, when there were periodic plagues of anthrax and other diseases, the dead humans and animals were thrown into a mass grave, covered and forgotten. Ironically, even after an extended time, when such graves are discovered, the only response is fear that it was anthrax, and the disease spores are still active. Typically, it is unearthed with caution, then fuel oil is poured on it and it is set afire. A year after the battle of Waterloo, the bones of the dead still lay on the battlefield, and were collected, then ground and sold to English farmers as fertilizer. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-04-12 18:10 |
| #1 You do not know what you are doing so I will run this for you. You have but NO CHOICE but to Consign and protect such remains in a safe place. You shall document every member of any remain found. You shall Document the precise 18 digit grid coordinate where you found it. You are not allowed to touch any remains from that site at all. There is a work stoppage, Only forensic personnel may work on this site. You shall contact the embassy of Israel and ask for forensic assistance. You shall pay for and assist them in obtaining the remains of these PEOPLE in any way possible, You shall document and provide to the Hague war crimes commission and Holocaust museum all data that you have gained during your feeble endeavor to date and offer assistance to any delegation that requests visa entry and access to these sites. You shall issue a press release. You shall stop all development immediately and pursue Insurance and debtors column for a stay of production. You shall notify all families of identifiable remains, items, and tissue samples that their kin has been found. You shall identify 18 specific families that you wiped out during WWII. Only I know who they are. You shall petition the government of Germany for all information they have on this camp and they must provide it to you. You must Say a prayer. And you must prepare for the end of your country forever. You shall be like the Jews. So Saith the Lord. |
| Posted by: newc 2008-04-12 15:45 |