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May 3, 2013
Doing holy work of restoration
Tending the Jewish cemetery in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, involves a concentrated group effort.
SHULA KLINGER
The city of Chernivtsi is situated in southwestern Ukraine, on the scenic banks of the River Prut. It is one of Ukraine’s cultural, education and historical centres. Famous for its rich architectural history, it is also known for its theatres, museums and music venues. Of course, it is also now known as the birthplace of the popular Jewish actor Mila Kunis.
Chernivtsi, however, was not always a Ukrainian city. For almost 150 years, this was the Austro-Hungarian city of Czernowitz. Popularly known as “Little Vienna” or “Jerusalem on the Prut,” it was – thanks to the Habsburg Empire – a place that welcomed Jews, and in which they thrived. In 1908, Nathan Birnbaum organized the first Yiddish language conference here.
Following the dissolution of Austro-Hungary in 1918, Czernowitz became Cernauti, in the Kingdom of Romania. The German language was forbidden as Romanian became the lingua franca. Restrictions were placed on Jews, who were not allowed to hold professional jobs or enter university.
In 1941, Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu created a ghetto in Cernauti. Following their confinement to the ghetto, Jews were deported to camps in Transnistria, a narrow territory at the border between Ukraine and Romania. The vast majority of them perished. Less than a third of the city’s Jews survived the Holocaust.
After the war, much of the remaining Jewish population emigrated. The imposing Moorish Revival synagogue became a movie theatre in 1951 and the vibrant society that was Jewish Czernowitz never revived. With nobody to tend to it, the Jewish cemetery lay neglected. It fell into disrepair, while the gravestones were engulfed by weeds. It was “a jungle,” according to Anny Matar, a former resident of Czernowitz now living in Haifa. However, thanks to the work of a few key organizations and their dedicated teams of volunteers, the neglected cemetery is now the focus of international attention. These teams of volunteers are cutting down trees, clearing weeds and learning about the city’s Jewish heritage.
Two European organizations hold summer camps in Czernowitz. The first is a nongovernmental organization called SVIT (Inter-regional Voluntary Organization) Ukraine. A branch of Civil Service International (SCI) based in eastern Ukraine, this group has been taking volunteers to the cemetery since 2008. Also working at the cemetery is ASF Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, which was founded by the German Protestant Church, and has been sending volunteers to the cemetery since 2009.
Former residents of Chernivtsi have also founded the Czernowitz Jewish Cemetery Restoration Organization, or CJRO, which hires volunteers. Mimi Taylor grew up in Chernivtsi and has worked tirelessly to promote and develop the cleanup project. She speaks highly of ASF’s work to “eradicate the plants, which threaten to destroy the cemetery.”
Kate Power works for ASF in Germany and has led three groups of elderly volunteers to work on the cemetery. It was her idea to restore particular graves on the request of surviving family members, as a way of making the volunteers’ work more personal. These lines of communication have led to some wonderful discoveries. Among these is the grave of Irene Fishler’s maternal grandmother, who died in 1924. Fishler, who lives in Haifa, now has a photograph of the tombstone and knows the names of the two volunteers who tended to it.
SVIT Ukraine and ASF both visit the cemetery every year with groups of about 15 volunteers each, representing a wide range of ages. In recent years, there have been as many as 150 workers at once. The volunteers live and work together, clearing the cemetery of trees and weeds, revealing the gravestones and recreating the cemetery grounds as a place of quiet contemplation.
Now many graves can be seen and visited properly. Anny Matar expressed her gratitude for this in terms of education: “That youth are willing to do this hard work for Jews goes beyond words. It shows how deeply education can help.”
The work is also appreciated by current members of Chernivtsi’s Jewish community. They host events to welcome the volunteers each summer and offer practical help with accommodation and tools.
For volunteers, the cemetery project is just as meaningful. Christian Herrmann, a volunteer from Germany, said that the cemetery project offers the workers an excellent education, by making history “more visible and less abstract.” He said that encounters with overseas visitors are especially valuable. “These meetings make a big impression on them. It adds a personal angle to their work,” he said.
Through volunteering, he added, workers gain a new vision of Chernivtsi. They learn how people of different origins can live together in peace, how fragile this peace appears to be and how everyone is responsible for helping to preserve it.
Polish student Karolina Koziura wrote her master’s thesis in anthropology about Jewish identity in Chernivtsi. Having volunteered numerous times since 2009, she spoke enthusiastically about the positive atmosphere among the cemetery volunteers. “We work together, cleaning tomb stones or cutting branches and trees. We all explore the cemetery in our free time. Then we share our discoveries, such as the beautiful sculptures, tombstones and symbols.”
Taking part in the cemetery project is truly a transformative experience, she said. “Only a few people have any interest in Jewish culture before they come to Chernivtsi but, after two weeks of work, almost all of them say that the Jewish cemetery is a fascinating place to learn about culture and memory.”
All of this activity has also inspired locals to come and lend a hand. These include young people who have heard and seen media reports about the project, students from the university, and even a unit from the Ukrainian army.
Koziura is pleased to see this kind of involvement in the cemetery cleanup. “Very often people do not know the history of their hometown or region. Many places are connected with Jews, but nowadays, only the cemeteries remind us of Jewish culture.” Participating in this kind of work camp, she said, can be “an act of commemoration.”
The work is not finished yet. Volunteers will be needed at the Jewish cemetery in Chernivtsi for many years to come. As Herrmann observed, “Some areas of the cemetery are accessible now, but others are not, and in others the vegetation did grow back very quickly – and there is still no plan for renewing damaged stones. We are talking about 11 hectares and 50,000 tombs.”
Koziura also cautioned against assuming that the local population is universally supportive. While the majority of her Ukrainian friends agree that these places should be remembered, there remains “a minority who believe that the cemetery should be cleared and maintained by Jews.”
Nonetheless, the value of this work is considerable: to the survivors of Jewish Czernowitz, their descendants and the present-day occupants of the city and surrounding regions. And it remains an extraordinary effort to bring people of different generations and cultures together, to create new meaning from the atrocities of the past.
Matar’s simple reflection sums it up perfectly: “This is avodat kodesh. This is holy work.”
Shula Klinger is an author and artist in North Vancouver, B.C. Her young adult novel, The Kingdom of Strange, was published in 2008 by Marshall Cavendish.
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