Painted gravestone decoration

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

During my recent trip visiting Jewish heritage sites in Slovakia, I came across some artwork that demonstrated the way Jewish gravestones were often painted in various colors to emphasize the carved ornamentation. (I have posted on this in the past, and have also posted pictures showing gravestones in Romania, Poland and Ukraine where you can still see traces of such polychrome decoration.)

The watercolor pictured above is a view of the  Jewish cemetery in Ungvar (today Uzhorod, Ukraine) painted in 1930, apparently by Eugen Barkany, who assembled the wonderful collection of Judaica and other objects that formed the basis of the Jewish museum founded in Presov, in eastern Slovakia, in 1928. (At the time both Uzhorod and Presov were part of Czechoslovakia -- to see old postcards of Uzhorod, click HERE.) The painting clearly shows the polychrome decoration.

The Barkany collection is now displayed in the women's gallery of the marvelously ornate Orthodox synagogue in Presov, a stop of the Slovak Jewish Heritage route (scroll down for previous posts on this route).

Here are some other paintings of cemeteries and stones by Barkany, from 1930, on display:

Can't read it well -- but, Humenne? (near Presov)

Lwow/L'viv -- tomb of the "Golden Rose" (cemetery has been destroyed)

Michalovce

Deciphering epitaphs

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I learned from a recent Philologos column in The Forward about Madaleine Isenberg, who makes a career of deciphering insciptions and epitaphs on Jewish gravestones -- and coined the term "stelaeglyphologist" to describe her profession. So far, she has worked on more than 3,200 such inscriptions in 20 different cemeteries in Slovakia.

Her skills are greatly needed, as inscriptions on tombstones can be complex, poetic, and full of biblical references and abbreviations. Some include complicated acrostics and other veiled references. And, of course, many matzevot are weathered and eroded.

Several online resources, such as one of JewishGen.org,  provide some of the rudiments -- and which, in fact, have aided me greatly in trying to read inscriptions. But most inscriptions are far too complex.....

Candlesticks on Stone - another cross post: a stone-carver reflects on tradition and symbolism

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A few days ago, I posted this picture of a tombstone-carver, taken in Ukraine in 1916.

Tombstone carver at work, 1916 

(image from Bildarchiv, National Library, Vienna)

The one finished tombstone that you can see is very simply carved, but clearly painted in at least three colors. It also appears that the stone-carver may be teaching his son the trade — several sources, including David Goberman and the art historian Moshe Barasch report that tombstone-carving was often (or at least sometimes) a family business, passed on down the generations. In his essay “Reflection on Tombstones: Childhood Memories” (which I have cited before for Barasch’s contemptuous attitude toward the “primitive” artistic character of the stones) Barasch recalls hearing about two families of tombstone-carvers in Czernowitz after World War I — the Picker family and the Steinmetz  family (the name means “stone carver”), both of which had been in the business “for several generations.”

In his PhD dissertation on Jewish tombstone inscriptions and iconography is what is now western Ukraine, Boris Khaimovich of the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem cites an interview conducted in 1926 by a Ukrainian art critic and ethnographer named  Taranoshchenko with the last professional tombstone carver from the town of Ozarintsy in Southern Podolia.  (For a fascinating account, including photos, of growing up in Ozarintsy at that time, click HERE. a photo of a synagogue in Ozarintsy in 1928 click HERE.)  He was a young man named Goldenberg. Taranoshchenko wanted to find out “what guided him in carving certain images on a tombstone: whether definite rules and tradition, or the wishes of the dead person’s family, or perhaps his own imagination.”
The young carver apparently had “poor knowledge of ancient tradition.” But he did adhere to memories this and said he was “usually guided” by certain considerations. Regarding women’s tombs they were:

1) for the grave of a young girl – a chopped down tree, a small fir-tree, a wreath, a bird;
2) for the gravestone of an important woman – a candelabrum (since the mistress of the house must light Shabbat candles), two candelabra, two birds

Bolekhiv/Bolechow -- tombstone of
Esther bat Meshulem Zalman, 1805. 

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The earliest tombstones bearing candlesticks to mark women’s tombs that were found and described by Boris Khaimovich in Ukraine and Silviu Sanie in Romania (Siret, just on the Ukrainian border) date from the late 18th and very early 19th centuries. By the mid-to-late 19th century, the imagery was almost universal.
The young carver Goldenberg’s account in Ozarintsy shows how strongly engrained the tradition became.
Boris Khaimovich concludes that:

Apparently, the “poor knowledge of tradition” referred to the fact that the carver neither used nor knew the meaning of the motifs depicted on old tombstones, which the researcher had also documented in the murals of the Ozarintsy synagogue. This means that the tradition was totally lost by the turn of the 20^th century. At the same time, the carver’s testimony sheds some light on the nature of this phenomenon, and clearly point at the existence of a special symbolic language, of which Goldenberg’s generation retained no more than vague notions and echoes. (BK Dissertation, p. 158)

Candlesticks on Stone - Typology...another cross post from the blog

Here's a cross post of my latest entry on the (Candle)sticksonstone web site

More thoughts on candlestick typology

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The basis of this project is the collection of photographs of candlesticks on Jewish tombstones that I myself have taken, in Romania, Ukraine, Poland and elsewhere. These images show a vast range of artistry, skill and invention in the portrayal of the candlestick motif in denoting Jewish women. But they are by no means exhaustive. And, in fact, the more I read and the more I work here at the Hadassah Brandeis Institute thinking and theorizing, the more I simply want to be back in the field, seeking out the stones  and documenting the iconography, particularly forms that I failed to photographs on earlier trips.

There is, actually, not very much published material on East European tombstone decoration, and even less about the candles/candlestick/menorah motif used to denote women’s tombs. Scholars have begun to bemoan this. There is, wrote University of Massachusetts professor Aviva Ben Ur, “an academic print culture that regards sculpted stones and cemeteries as largely peripheral [...] The historian’s focus on the written word has also meant that stone imagery is at most a secondary consideration. Research on Jewish sepulchres has thus focused on inscriptions, and has been primarily concerned with local community history, genealogy of distinguished members, and linguistic aspects.” (See her article “Still Life: Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and West African Art and Form in Suriname’s Jewish Cemeteries” in American Jewish History, vol 92/1).

This attitude was borne out by the distinguished art historian Moshe Barasch, who in 1988 wrote a memoir article, “Reflection on Tombstones: Childhood Memories,” about the Jewish cemetery in his native Czernowitz (now Cernivtsi) Ukraine. Concerning the “level of artistic achievement” of the stone-carvings, he wrote:

Not too much should be expected. I shall have to describe the artistic character of the monuments as “primitive,” without going into a discussion of what the term means, fully aware that the meaning is far from obvious [...] Keeping mind the rather modest quality of these monuments, one’s expectations as to what the free exercise of an artist’s skill may provide in them should not be too high. (article published in Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 9, No. 17 (1988), pp. 127-135)

I of course strongly disagree with Barasch! (And the pictures that go with his article also prove him wrong.) He does admit, though, that one can be  “often surprised” by “the variations invented by popular fantasy and executed by anonymous stone carvers.”

In his PhD dissertation (which he very kindly sent me) Boris Khaimovich, of the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem, writes deeply and exhaustively about the carving, form and iconography of Jewish tombstones in western Ukraine in the 17th and 18th centuries — a period where some women’s tombstones were marked by candles but before the “boom” in this imagery in the 19th century that made them so commonplace. (One question that intrigues me, in fact, is why the candlestick boom developed? And why, really, only in parts of eastern Europe?)

Boris delves in depth into the meaning of animal and other imagery such as that  of birds representing the soul, or heraldic eagles — with one or two heads — representing the absoluteness of heavenly power, or that of a bear holding or pushing through branches, found both men’s and women’s tombs, and believed to symbolize that the deceased was pious or righteous.

Sataniv, Ukraine -- woman's tomb, with bear holding branches

But he only mentions candlesticks as women’s markers in passing (if at all) — though the photographs that go with his text clearly show a variety of candlestick, candelabra and menorah motifs, including an 18th century tombstone with hands blessing the candles.

My friend Monika Krajewska’s ground-breaking book A Tribe of Stone, which came out in Poland in 1993, remains one of the most comprehensive discussions of tombstone art in Eastern Europe — though it deals almost exclusively with Poland. Monika and her husband Staszek were early pioneers in seeking out and documenting Jewish cemeteries in Poland; Monika’s earlier book, A Time of Stones, came out in the early 1980s and was one of the first books on a Jewish topic to be published following the loosening of censorship in Poland thanks to the Solidarnosc revolution of 1980.

She describes a wide variety of typology of candlesticks, including braided candelabra which — as I have mentioned in an earlier post — she likens to the braiding of Challah bread (and thus representing two of the three “women’s commandments” at once) but which others describe as a form of the mystical “endless knot” motif. She writes:

“Some stone-cutters produced unusual forms, like a five-branched candelabrum made of snakes, or ones with branches that end with birds’ heads, oak leaves, or imaginary fish which lions’ heads. The foot of the candlestick may also take various shapes, such as an anchor or griphons’ heads. Candelabra made of floral ornaments derive from the mystical concept of the menorah as a Tree of Life, even though the stone masons who rendered such carvings might have been unaware of the association.”

She also notes the many ways that stone-carvers used candles being broken or extinguished as “elaborate death metaphors.”

“These include an eagle shown extinguishing candles with its claws, or a griphon putting out a flame with its beak. The following image is also rare, as well as intriguing: in the center of the relief are candles in candlesticks, some broken and others not; on one or two sides, hands hold new candles and seem to be lighting them from the old ones. Is this an allusion to the handing down of tradition, or of transmitting life itself?”

Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland, 2010. Broken candles and a griffin.

Gura Humorului, September 2009. Griffins and candlesticks. An extremely elaborate, elegantly carved stone, from 1863, including griffins and floral designs.

Candlesticks on Stone - another cross post from the blog

Tombstone carver at work, 1916 (image from Bildarchiv, National Library, Vienna)

Stone-carver picture: a master at work

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I’m posting this wonderful picture that Sergey Kravstov sent me of a tombstone carver in his shop in the town of Volodymyr-Volyn’skyi, Ukraine (known in Yiddish as Ludmir), in the Autumn of 1916 (the date is known from the date on the tombstone in the picture, which is assumed to have been carved — and painted — within the month after the funeral). The photo is from a glass negative held in the Bildarchiv (picture archive) of the National Library in Vienna.

The town is just inside today’s Ukraine near the Polish border, between Zamosc in Poland and Lutsk, Ukraine. At the time the picture was taken, about 6,000 Jews lived in the town.

If the finished stone show in any indication, this carver’s work was very simple — uh, minimalist? — and in no way approached the splendid sculptural style of past centuries. But — the picture clearly shows how the tombstone was painted. As seen below, this practice is still alive in Ukraine — in this picture, in the village of Sharhorod. (See comments to this post at the Candlesticks on Stone blog for a discussion of the methodology of painting and tombstones.)

Sharhorod, Ukraine -- sketched candlesticks and painted color.

Eastern Europe -- (Candlesticks) on Stone

My great-great grandmother's tombstone (center) in Radauti. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I arrived at Brandeis University, near Boston, this week to take up a Scholar in Residence fellowship at the Hadassah Brandeis Insitute. For almost the next two months, I will be working on my (Candle)sticks on Stone project about the representation of women in Jewish tombstone art.

It is a multi-faceted project based on the photographic work I have carried out in the Jewish cemeteries of northern Romania, Ukraine, Poland and elsewhere, where the decorative carving on Jewish tombstones is often highly elaborate and scuptural.

I have long been fascinated by the iconography and purely decorative carving on the tombs -- my Candlesticks project focuses on the artistry and symbolism used on women's tombstones. Candlesticks often mark the graves of women, as lighting the Sabbath candles is the only one of the "three women's commandments" that can easily be represented in physical artistic form (the others have to do with observing the laws of Niddah separating men from women during their menstrual periods, and that of Challah, or burning a piece of dough when making bread.)

In addition to organizing and adding more photos to the web site, I will also be researching tombstones and symbolism -- and I will also be investigating the transmission of tradition. The main cemetery I have documented, in Radauti, Romania, is where at least two of my female ancestors are buried, each a pious woman who observed traditions and whose gravestone bears the carving of candlesticks. But, in my generation,  few if any of the descendants of these women regularly light the candles.

Poland -- fascinating exhibit in Warsaw

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

A fascinating photographic exhibit opens in Warsaw next week -- it's about Jewish tombstones used for purposes other than marking a Jewish grave.

The opening of "Matzevot of Everyday Use" will take place at the Center for Contemporary Art, ul. Jazdow, at 7 p.m.  on Oct. 28 and run for a month.

Łukasz Baksik is the author of the photographs and the initiator of the exhibition. For many months, he has been searching for and taking photos of matzevot which had been taken from Jewish cemeteries and used as paving, building materials, grinding wheels, hones and graves at Christian cemeteries.
‘I have investigated what has happened with Jewish tombstones,’ said the author. ‘I found a household with a cowshed built from matzevot in the town center just near the police commissariat, fire brigade premises and the church. I also came across Catholic tombstones from which one had forgotten to rub off Hebrew letters. I talked to people who, being aware of what they had in their yards, did not consider it as something improper. I discovered the history of some relatives who were reunited after many years thanks to the one matzevah.’

I have seen many examples of this on my own travels.

Poland -- tombstones recovered

The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland reports that more than 60 Jewish tombstones used during the World War II to pave a courtyard of the Gestapo prison in the town of Mogielnica, south of Warsaw, have been discovered, unearthed and secured. After the renovation of the Jewish cemetery in Mogielnica, the stones will be returned to the cemetery grounds

Poland -- Fascinating article on epitaphs in Bialystok Jewish Cemetery

Tomasz Wiesniewski opens the gate to the Bagnowka Jewish cemetery in Bialystok, 2006. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

by Ruth Ellen Gruber

The online "Jewish Magazine" publishes a fascinating article by the scholar Heidi M. Szpek about the epitaphs in the Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery in Bialystok, Poland.

Called "In the Bloodshed of Their Days," it explores how tombstone epitaphs provide a vivid picture of the people buried there, and thus shed light on the life of the community -- both the good times and the bad.

As I translated each of this cemetery's inscriptions, I read of the character and qualities of the Bialystoker Jews, of "perfect and upright men" and "modest and God-fearing women". On their tombstones are also words of praise for great rabbis, scholars, and charitable women. Old age is recorded as a triumph, especially in the case of an Abraham son of Israel who lived to be 102 years old. What history Abraham must have seen and experienced from 1830 to 1932, the century and more of his life! (Image 2) Occasionally, the lesser qualities of the deceased are remembered, as one father wrote of his daughter: "Her mouth ceased from (its) evil tongue" – she gossiped! 

These inscriptions also hold details that were sadly normal to life in a world a century ago in Bialystok, Poland. Inscriptions remember women who died in childbirth, especially in the cold winter months, women who died before they could marry, and a man who barely experienced the joy of fatherhood before his untimely death. And then there are the tombstones of children. Perhaps the most heart wrenching inscription is that of three sons – Chaim Lejb, Shalom Shechna and Israel Abraham, aged eight, six and four, who died in a fire in March of 1908! How did their father, Asher, and their mother endure this loss? Such deaths, though sad, are not unique to Bialystok; they were part of life without the comforts of the contemporary world.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Szpek, a Professor of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Central Washington University (Ellensburg, Washington), is currently writing a book on the Jewish epitaphs from Bialystok. She spent three years translating all the epitaphs in the Bagnowka cemetery, the only Jewish cemetery to remain in Bialystok. Over the years she has worked with Tomasz Wisniewski, who has dedicated the past quarter century to documenting Jewish heritage in eastern Poland and who has been my own guide to Bialystok.

In Bialystok, Poland's Jewish cemetery on Wschodnia Street, the black Memorial Pillar that stands at its center is a blatant visual reminder of hatred vented in the past. The nearly 50 tombstone inscriptions that speak of "the bloodshed of the days" also bear subtle witness to Jewish persecution in the years 1905 onward. But of what value is this knowledge? The answer no doubt depends on the individual. For some people these tombstones might bring awareness that this entire cemetery - not just the tall, black Memorial Pillar – is a memorial to the "bloodshed of the days" in Bialystok's past. For others the knowledge imparted by these inscriptions fosters remembrance of the very personal world of Bialystok Jewry, a world at times gentle and loving, a world at times sad and violent. But for me, in particular, these horrific phrases, combined with a woman's name, a father's name, a child's name, with words of love mixed with words of grief, and a date, remind me of specific incidents in Bialystok's past. Together all these words also remind me that I am not simply translating words cut into stone. Rather as I translate I feel – if only for a moment – a touch of the anguish experienced by those of Bialystok's now 'lost' Jewish community, those perceived as 'the other' by past generations of Russians, Poles and Germans. In this brief moment of my anguish, an indissoluble desire is implanted in my mind and engraved on the tablets of my heart - that past hatred may not bequeath to us a future legacy of hatred and anguish. 

Read full article

The memorial to the 1905 pogrom, Bialystok cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Romania -- Jewish cemetery in Gura Humorului

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've begun to post some YouTube videos of Jewish cemeteries in northern Romania that I am documenting for my (Candle)sticks on Stone project, which examines the way that women are represented in Jewish tombstone art.

The first video is of the cemetery in Gura Humorului, a little town in the heart of the painted monastery country -- two wonderful medieval monasteries, Humor and Voronets, are nearby. To me, the beautiful Jewish tombstones are in perfect harmony with the wonderful paintings on the monastery walls: touriststs visit the monasteries, however, and few people set foot in the cemetery.

Romania -- Botosani

Botosani. Entrance to old Jewish cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A few months ago, I posted on the desecration of tombstones at the Jewish cemetery in Botosani, Romania. I visited the cemetery last week as part of my (Candle)sticks on Stone project to document the representation of women in Jewish tombstone art in northern Romania's Bucovina region.

The cemetery is vast, and though the newest section is well maintained (and still used by the small Jewish community) the rest of the cemetery is almost inpenetrable.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

It is in the newer section of the cemetery, just on the edge of the overgrown part, that the vandalism took place: a number of smashed and toppled stones still lie there.

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I had wanted to go back to Botosani because I had been so impressed by the distinctive carvings on the (men's) tombstones I had seen three years ago -- vigorous lions, stags and other animals carved in a style that was almost reminiscent of art deco! I had seen a number of these stones in a clearing, down a path from the newer section, and I wanted to see if the same artist/stone mason had also carved candlesticks on women's stones.

This time I found the path, but in three years, weeds, brush, bushes and even saplings have grown up, once again hiding many of the stones that had so impressed me and making it very difficult to take pictures!

Botosani. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

I did discover some extremely beautiful and evocative candlesticks -- quite different from those in other towns. But it was so dark and so overgrown that I didn't manage to get the images I had hoped for...Still...

Botosani. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Romania -- Occupational Hazards

Siret -- new cemetery from middle cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Sept. 6, 2009

I tromped around in the Jewish cemetery in Siret, Romania (on the border with Ukraine) this morning: as I already knew, but recognized yet again, this is not the best time of year to be trying to research and/or photograph neglected Jewish cemeteries....In Radauti, a few days ago, I got hot and sweaty clumping through the grass and weeds in a cemetery that is actually very well maintained (by the gold-toothed Mr. Popescu, who also provides water in a plastic bottle to wash hands with, according to tradition, when leaving the cemetery. He pours it three times over your fist. A woman who may or may not be Mrs. Popescu will open up the tall domed ceremonial hall and draw out slim candles, if you ask.)

At Radauti, I was bothered (so to speak) by the spider webs that looped across the spaces between the tombstones and also draped from the overhanging branches to the stone. More so than the webs, I was bothered by the big fat brown spiders that sat amid them, waiting, or occasionally scutting up the slim threads when they felt a human presence.

When I got back from photographing the stones in Radauti, actually, several hours later, I was perturbed to find, crawling on the brilliant white of my hotel bed linen, a little black tick....Shades of the fear of lime disease (from which a friend of mine in Hungary has been suffering.) Also memories of how I was bitten by a tick when visiting the old Jewish cemetery on the Lido of Venice, some years ago. I had to get a tetanus shot and take the dead tick to the health service for analysis. An interesting way to see untouristed parts of the city.

At Siret, there were no spiders. But there was plenty of tall grass that I swathed through -- thank goodness for my cowboy boots. They saved my legs 3 years ago, when I tripped and fell over a hidden stone in the cemetery of Sadagora, Ukraine.

This is the third time I've been to Siret, whose three cemeteries are among the most impressive. I also love the way you can discern the hand of individual artists -- there are "templates" of style, arrangements of elements as well as individualistic style of carving.

This has always been one of my favorite stones in Siret. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The tall grass and other undergrowth made it difficult to get to many if not most parts of the special "middle" cemetery; but it was Sunday, and standing there, swimming through the weeds, recording the physical reminders of so many Jews who once lived here -- the archetypical "Tribe of Stones" -- I could hear the Sunday service the one of the local churches, broadcast over a loudspeaker.

Jewish Tombstones as Building Material -- This Time in the U.S...

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The photographer Ahron D. Weiner has discovered Jewish tombstones used to build an embankment for the Woodmere Club's golf course on Long Island.

In Tablet Magazine, where a slide show of his photographs is posted, Weiner said:

the club insists the stones—none of which seem to contain dates, only names and symbols—were extra granite, donated many years ago by long-dead club members.

If that is the case -- fine and good!

Still, I've documented and written about Jewish cemeteries and tombstones in eastern Europe for 20 years by now, and always one of the most disturbing sights is to find gravestones used as building material.

There are many examples -- back in November, I posted here about a planned exhibition on this topic.

Sometimes this type of misuse was done out of deliberate desecration -- as when the Nazis demolished cemeteries and used the tombstones to pave roads or line ditches and river beds, or as foundations for buildings...I vividly recall a farmer in the village of Krynki, in eastern Poland, prying away stones to show us how they were used as the foundation of what he said had been a pig sty....

Other times, however, Jews seem to have used the stones themselves.... there is a long retaining wall at the historic Jewish cemetery in Mikulov, Czech Republic, for example, that is composed of tombstones.

Mikulov. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Mikulov. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

In the past 25-30 years, it has become commonplace to use broken tombstones as a sort of mosaic memorial wall, to commemorate Holocaust victims.

There are many examples of this -- the most famous, perhaps, is in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Krakow and the large Holocaust memorial at the site of one of the Jewish cemeteries in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland.

Earlier this month, I photographed such a wall at the New Jewish Cemetery in Krakow:

Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

(Candle)sticks on Stone -- Introducing My New Web Site

As I reported earlier, I have been awarded the first Michael Hammer Tribute Research Grant by the Hadassah Brandeis Institute for a project called “(Candle)sticks on Stone: Representing the Woman in Jewish Tombstone Art”.

Each year the HBI awards 20 to 30 grants to support academic and artistic projects about Jews and gender. My project was selected by the HBI board as "an exceptional research award" to be dedicated to the memory of Michael Hammer, the husband of one of the board members, who died last year.

My project centers around the richly decorated tombstones of women in the Jewish cemetery in Radauti, Romania, where my own great-grandmother, Ettel Gruber, is buried. Many of these stones bear sometimes very elaborate depictions of candlesticks, and of women's hands blessing the flames.

As part of the project, I have set up a combined web site/blog on which I will post photo galleries and text related to my subject and also post blog entries chronicling my reflections and insights as I progress. There is also room for comment from visitors.

Please visit the site at candlesticksonstone.wordpress.com.

The site is in a continuing state of evolution and development -- so I hope you'll keep coming back!

Belarus -- Jewish Tombstones Discovered in Brest

A Belarus newspaper reports that a trove of Jewish tombstones -- apparently used by the Nazis to pave a parade ground -- has been unearthed in central Brest during excavations for an outpatient clinic. During World War II a Gestapo headquarters stood at the spot.

The first tombstone was discovered as soon as workers removed the asphalt layer on April 8 and a total of 12 tombstones were found as of Friday.

The tombstones, which are some 50 centimeters wide and about 150 centimeters tall, appear to have been removed from the graves of rabbis by Nazi troops. [...]

All tombstones are to be taken to the Brest Fortress war memorial, where some 2,000 such pieces are already kept. They are expected to be used in the creation of a memorial at the site where a Jewish cemetery once was and where the Lakamatyw stadium was built later.

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