The Council of Europe, the Strasbourg-based pan-European body of 47 countries, is backing a new initiative to protect Jewish burial grounds in Central and Eastern Europe, the ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative announced on Friday.
CoE Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland will be in the town of Frampol, in south-eastern Poland, next week to visit the local Jewish cemetery, which was restored with the help of school students.
Prior to World War II, the town had a large Jewish population. Frampol, or a fictional version thereof, is the setting of many stories of famous Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. In September 1939, the German Luftwaffe destroyed almost the entire town in an air raid. Around a thousand local Jews were shot by the Nazi occupiers and buried in a mass grave at the cemetery site.
Jagland will be joined by former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin. Both me will meet with students from Frampol's school who have helped in the protection of the local Jewish cemetery, a site owned by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ), which is the Polish partner of the ESJF.
The Council of Europe supports such projects under the 2005 Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Faro Convention). The convention links the concept of the "common heritage of Europe" to human rights and the fundamental freedoms for which the Council of Europe remains one of the historic guardians.
Jagland, a former prime minister and foreign minister of Norway, said ahead of his visit to Poland: "The Council of Europe supports projects of cultural heritage which contribute to reconciliation, mutual understanding and inclusive societies. I am grateful to the ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, for sharing our vision and promoting Jewish heritage which is integral to our common European culture and society."
Philip Carmel, chief executive of the ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, said: "We look forward to Mr. Jagland's visit to Frampol, and we thank him and the Council of Europe for lending support to this important endeavor. We are in a race against time to protect the last physical vestiges of Jewish presence in the thousands of towns and villages of Central and Eastern Europe wiped out by the Nazis. Our role is to physically protect these sites, and we must act now as memory becomes history and it will soon be too late."
Carmel added: "Ultimately, it's not fences that protect Jewish cemeteries, but people. Long-term protection requires the mobilisation and concern of local people. Protecting the Jewish heritage also means protection one's own local heritage."
The ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative was set up as a German-based non-profit organization in early 2015 with the core objective of protecting and preserving Jewish cemetery sites across the European continent through delineation of cemetery boundaries and the construction of cemetery walls and locking gates.
Felix Klein, Germany's special representative for relations with Jewish organizations, said: “The huge number of neglected Jewish cemeteries all over Eastern Europe is a result of the Holocaust. This tragedy is still far from being completely researched and assessed. Germany continues and will continue to support this important project. Preserving the memory of the Holocaust is an ongoing political responsibility which the Foreign Office considers itself bound to uphold.”
During its pilot year, the ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative completed over 30 fencing projects in Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic. In 2016, the NGO is expanding its activities into Belarus, Serbia and Hungary. There are about 10,000 known Jewish cemetery sites across Europe, many of them overgrown.
