The Mariupol Jewish community has been an integral part of life in the Ukrainian city for nearly 200 years. Yet if vandals have their way, the last traces of an important part of the city’s Jewish past may soon disappear.
The large Jewish cemetery in Mariupol, located on the bank of the Kalmius River, is the final resting place of hundreds of the city’s Jews, including victims of a 1905 pogrom. The pogrom took place from Oct. 20 to Oct. 22. On those very same dates in 1941, the Nazis shot 16,000 Jewish people outside of Mariupol.
According to the city’s rabbi, Chabad emissary Rabbi Mendel Cohen, the cemetery has not been used in decades (the community has a section in a different cemetery for use) and is officially closed to the public.
Cohen says years of neglect and vandalism have brought things to a point that the cemetery will soon cease to remain recognizable as a Jewish holy ground.
“The police found the recently broken headstones during a regular patrol,” the rabbi tells Chabad.org, “but this is nothing new. People have been going in and breaking things there for years. The cemetery is on city property, and only the municipality has the power to prevent this from happening. I am especially saddened by the state of the mass grave. These poor people were murdered because of their Jewishness, and even their gravesite is desecrated.”
The rabbi reports that the cemetery is overrun with weeds and trees, and many of the gravestones have toppled or been smashed by vandals. Even though vandalism has been seen there before, the culprits were never pursued and charges never brought.
On Sunday, volunteers from the Chabad-run “Stars and EnerJew” programs visited the crumbling cemetery and did some restoration work, but they fear that their efforts will not be enough.
“The cemetery is in a sorry state,” reports youth leader Alisa Rostovtseva. “The whole plot is overgrown with grass and trees, the tombstones have been destroyed partially by time and partly by people. We can make a difference, but we will need the help of city officials, as well as anyone who appreciates the importance of preserving our past.”
“This is the last trace of hundreds of people who lived and died here—shopkeepers, laborers, rabbis, professionals, an entire Jewish community with a yeshivah and many synagogues,” says the rabbi, who has served Mariupol since 2005. “This is a knife to the heart to many of our congregants whose relatives are buried there. The cemetery is officially sealed off, so it is out of our hands to protect or restore it. People are often there breaking and destroying; we call upon the municipal leaders to take a strong stand.”
Under the rabbi’s leadership, the Jewish community of Mariupol, which numbers 2,500-strong, supports an active synagogue, kindergarten, kollel institute of higher learning, mikvah, summer and winter camps, soup kitchen and more.
In recent years, the city was at the center of the fighting between Ukrainian forces and the Russian-backed separatists.
The rabbi says his community wants the city to remove the excessive growth and filth from the cemetery, restore the broken tombstones and protect it from future vandalism.
Join the Discussion