Belarus Jews Slam Planned Construction At Cemetery
(JTA) — In a rare criticism of Belarusian authorities, leaders of the Jewish community of that country said they were “concerned” over plans to build apartments atop what used to be a Jewish cemetery in Gomel.
The statement given earlier this week to JTA by the Union of Public Associations and Jewish Communities in Belarus is unusual for that country, which is sometimes referred to as “Europe’s last dictatorship” over the authoritarian rule of its president, Alexander Lukashenko.
The Aug. 21 ruling by the Tsentralny District Court was on a motion for an injunction submitted by Yakov Goodman, a Jewish-American activist for the preservation of Jewish heritage sites in his native Belarus who is outspoken in his criticism of the Lukashenko regime.
The Jewish union “is closely monitoring the situation in Gomel and is constant touch with representatives of the local Jewish community,” the organization’s statement also read.
The last burial that took place at the cemetery happened before 1885, and most human remains “are likely gone as a result of previous construction — if they there were in this location to begin with,” the union also said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO