In Belarus, a long time ago, a big Jewish cemetery was turned into a sports ground. The stones from the cemetery were used to make roads and buildings instead.
Many years later, the damaged stone slabs started to appear during the renovation. Now, because of the dedicated efforts of a charity organization from Belarus and the United Kingdom, the headstones will be treated with the proper dignity they deserve as part of a new memorial at the location.
They will build a scary building where the old cemetery used to be in Brest. The building will be made from pieces of old tombstones that have been found in the city and nearby areas over the past 20 years.
Brest, also called Brest-Litovsk, used to be an important place for Jewish people’s lives before World War II. Jewish people started living there since the 14th century. Before the war, over 20,000 Jews lived there. According to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust museum, only around 10 people were left after the Holocaust.
Many people think that a lot of people were buried in the cemetery, including important rabbis and wise teachers. However, today there is not much proof that their graves were actually there.
In simpler words, the first part of the destruction started during the war when the Nazis tried to ruin the cemetery by selling the tombstones. The damage kept happening even after the war when the Soviets used religious symbols for construction work. They eventually covered the entire area with asphalt to make a running track and football stadium, according to members of the Jewish community in Belarus. The sports buildings, even though they are in bad condition, are still there and can be used by anyone.
The cemetery was forgotten for a long time, but in the late 1990s, some pieces of the broken stones started to appear again when people were doing construction work in the city.
Debra Brunner, the CEO and co-founder of The Together Plan, a charity leading the memorial project, explained that right now, there is no evidence or indication that it is a cemetery.
In the last few years, many headstones (called matzevot in Hebrew) have been found and saved. They have been taken pictures of, organized, and put into a searchable database in a warehouse. They will become part of a big memorial on the location.
Artur Livshyts, co-director of The Together Plan, says there are 1,287 pieces with writing on them. There are also around 2,000 to 2,500 more pieces without any writing on them. The organization’s US partner is called The Jewish Tapestry Project.
Earlier this year, Livshyts, who is one of about 20,000 Jewish people living in Minsk, Belarus, received a message from a young couple. The couple had recently purchased a run-down house in Brest that had been vacant for over 20 years.
Brunner said that the house was in really bad shape, but they still purchased it with the intention of fixing it up. While doing construction, they found out that the basement was made from gravestones. After the war, the family who lived in this house used the matzevot as materials to build with.
After the family had a lot of bad things happen to them, people believed it was because of a curse from the headstones, according to Brunner.
“When the new couple found the markers for graves, they felt a strong urge to do what was right, so they contacted the Jewish community in Brest to ask for guidance. ”
Brunner and Livshyts want to build a memorial by the end of 2024. The memorial will remember the community that was tragically destroyed and teach people about Brest’s current Jewish community.
The memorial will be placed in a corner of the area, far from the sports facilities. The place will have a black rock with words in English, Russian, and Hebrew. The area around it will have trees, grass, and pretty flowers. The Brest municipality is in favor of the idea and has promised to take care of it once it becomes available, as stated by The Together Plan.
The mayor of Brest’s office has not replied to CNN’s request for a comment on the project yet. Belarus, led by President Alexander Lukashenko, is facing criticism from the international community for its involvement in Russia’s war in Ukraine and crackdown on civil society.
The charity thinks it needs to collect about $325,000 for the memorial. Some of this money has already been promised by a donor named Stephen Grynberg, who has a close connection to Brest’s Jewish history.
Grynberg’s dad, Jack, was one of a few Jewish people in Brest who made it through the Holocaust. The filmmaker from Los Angeles told CNN that many of his family members were killed by the Nazis.
During the 1990s, Grynberg interviewed Holocaust survivors for the Shoah Foundation. The foundation was created by Steven Spielberg, a famous Hollywood figure, to capture and document their experiences. After seeing how impactful the work was, he convinced his dad to talk about his experiences during the war, and they went back to Brest together.
“I had a deep experience during that trip,” said Grynberg, who is 60 years old, when talking to CNN. I found out that there were 70 to 100 family members in this town and they all died. Dad’s ancestors from both sides, his siblings, his parents’ siblings, and his extended family. His entire extended family, except for his immediate family, were killed.
He said that in 1997, there were no indications of the cemetery. We were brought to that place and our guide told us ‘this is where the cemetery used to be. ‘ Understanding things about the Holocaust is difficult, you can only have powerful and complex emotions about it. I was just thinking about the possibility of them destroying a cemetery and constructing something on top of it. I felt very empty inside.
In 2015, Grynberg went back to Brest. He learned about headstones appearing during construction and met with Brunner and Livshyts.
Grynberg asked a designer named Brad Goldberg to create a plan for the memorial. Goldberg’s family had helped Grynberg’s father when he came to the US, so he knew him well.
“I’m not certain, but I don’t think any of my family members are buried in this cemetery because my ancestors lived in Brest,” Grynberg said. He explained that his grandparents had moved to Brest, so it’s likely that his relatives were buried in a different place in Belarus. These are all the people who were buried there before the war. It feels like my connection to this town is more important.
He explained that the goal is not to copy a cemetery, but to make sure that people buried in this place are respected and honored.
During a phone interview with CNN, Goldberg explained that his design consists of two big curved shapes that create a big area on the location. This area will showcase some of the damaged stones.
“I named it a hug,” he said. This hug is for the gravestones that are still whole.
“It’s not a graveyard,” he said. All of them are looking in different ways, like they are talking to each other.
We asked one rabbi what it was about, and he said it’s more about life than death.
Livshyts said to CNN: “This will finally put the stones to rest, right where they should be. ” I think it’s a fair outcome based on past events.
He said that even though the actual bodies cannot be found, they can bring back the stones and place them where the cemetery used to be.