In May in Lviv the project "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" started for the third time already. The participants will be able to attend lectures on history of Jewish communities of the region, Hebrew, cartography, working with primary sources, study the characteristics of reading inscriptions on tombstones and prepare for expeditions in the region.
The first such trip was to Univ, Dunayev and Peremyshlyani.
The first point of this little expedition — the town of Dunayev (Peremyshlyany district). The Hillel students first found this cemetery in 2012. It was not easy to determine the exact location. The ruins are still almost invisible in the of long grass and hidden deep in the forest.
No one knows when and by whom the cemetery was destroyed, but it is clear that it was ruined carefully to leave no trace. To this day no headstone has been found not broken apart. Participants of the project wondered how this place was found at all.
Next stop was Univ. Univ is usually associated only with the period of the Holocaust when Andrey and Clementiy Sheptyts'ky hid Jewish children there. Few know about the ruins of the Jewish cemetery. Only three tombstones were found here and some fragments lying face down.
Peremyshlyany were the last stop. Once there was a large community. Two cemeteries were known to be there once but unfortunately both were destroyed. The headstones from one of the cemeteries were brought outside the town. They are there for over 50 years now.
The guys spent the day learning to read the inscriptions on the headstones, removing grass and moss and describing what they saw. The condition of Jewish culture in the towns with Jews up to 70% of population before the World War II and not a single Jew today left nobody indifferent.
Returning home in the evening the guys agreed to meet at a lecture on Jewish history in the region to do as much as possible to preserve the memory of the community.
