NGO TO USE AERIAL DRONES TO MAP OUT JEWISH BURIAL SITES ACROSS EUROPE
ZACHARY KEYSER
The effort will be funded by the European Union amid a time of worrying rises in antisemitism across the continent, with many of the recent acts targeting Jewish cemeteries in particular.
The European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (EJCI) plans to use aerial drones to survey 1,500 Jewish cemeteries spanning countries where the Holocaust significantly impacted the attrition of the Jewish population throughout Europe – including Ukraine, Greece, Moldova, Slovakia and Lithuania.
The EJCI, a German-based NGO, is responsible for protecting Jewish burial sites throughout Europe, especially in places where the German-Nazi army attempted to wipe-out existing populations of Jews.
Once discovered, the EJCI will not only map out the burial site locations, but will also erect fences around the locations “so people know there’s a Jewish cemetery [there],” according to EJCI Chief Executive Philip Carmel.
The effort will be funded by the European Union amid a time of worrying rises in antisemitism across the continent, with many of the recent acts targeting Jewish cemeteries in particular.
In the latest incident of a series of antisemitic attacks in European Union, a Jewish cemetery close to Strasbourg was vandalized and some 100 gravestones desecrated and spray-painted with Swastikas.
One of the gravestones was daubed with the words “Black Wolves,” a militant far-right separatist group from the Alsace region, where Quatzenheim is located, which was active in the 1970s and 1980s.
In one attack in 1976, the Black Wolves group set fire to and destroyed the Natzweiler-Struthof Nazi concentration camp located in Alsace.
In December, a Jewish cemetery in the nearby town of Herrlisheim was also desecrated with 37 gravestones spray-painted with Swastikas and other graffiti.
Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog denounced the desecration of the graves, describing it as “another severe incident that underlines the antisemitism virus attacking Europe and threatening Jews in the streets,” adding “Governments, wake up.”
The attack came as dozens of rallies against antisemitism were set to be staged last Tuesday evening across France in response to a series of high profile antisemitic incidents in France in recent weeks.
The rallies were organized by 14 political parties and took place in as many as French 60 cities.
French President Emmanuel Macron, together with president of the Senate Gérard Larcher and president of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand, went to the Holocaust Memorial to “express their solidarity with the Jewish community in France” and to “reaffirm their commitment to the values of the Republic and their common determination never to give in to hatred and violence,” L’Express reported.
Last Friday evening, teenagers shot a Jewish man with an air-rifle outside a synagogue in the Paris suburb of Saracelle, lightly injuring him.
A couple weeks ago, “Yellow Vest” protesters hurled antisemitic abuse at French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, while a tree planted in memorial of Ilan Halimi, who was brutally murdered in 2006, was chopped down ahead of a memorial event for him in Paris.
And a government report released last week found that antisemitic attacks had spiked by 74 percent in 2018 over the previous year.
To complete the initiative, the EJCI will be requesting volunteers from each of the designated countries to assist in the effort to fully map out Jewish burial sites across Europe throughout the year, and will employ separate volunteers to help maintain the sites after the survey initiative is complete.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.