Lvov: The municipality will collect Jewish gravestones off the sidewalks

City of Lvov will remove the Jewish tombstones from the sidewalks and return them to the cemetery - reports newspaper Ma'ariv. Roots of the painful affair are buried at the municipality building efforts after the area was liberated from the Nazis, and rehabilitation after the war. To pave sidewalks, authorities used Jewish tombstones to build sidewalks in the city. A few years later they took other gravestones and built with them the main market.

After long protests from the Jewish community, the municipality announced that it will remove the tombstones made into construction materials and return them to the Jewish cemetery in Lvov.

Community leaders are doubtful and argue that many tombstones are still on the city sidewalks. Shoichet Miller, representative of the Council of Jewish Communities in Ukraine of the former Soviet Union, says that "you can see on every tombstone the Hebrew writing. These stones being trampled on every day are still holy. This is mass grave desecration.

Some tombstones are in surrounding villages of Lvov. Such is the village Dovromil that Victor Zachrtzuk is resident of, said that his courtyard is paved with Jewish tombstones, he said, he would be happy if the city will turn them but it refuses.

The municipality, however, claims that the collection of tombstones involves great expense and that if they could raise the necessary budgets soon they will collect fragments of monuments scattered around the city.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!