Volunteers rescue Jewish headstones used to pave street in western Ukraine

Volunteers rescue dozens of Jewish headstones used to pave a street in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

“The whole street is made from matzevot,” Sasha Nazar, director of the Lviv Volunteer Center of the Hesed Arieh All-Ukrainian Jewish Charitable Foundation, tells Jewish Heritage Europe, using the Hebrew word for gravestones. He says he was notified about the discovery last week, after city workers began roadwork on the street, vul. Barvinok in central Lviv. The Lviv Volunteer Center organized volunteers to work at the site this week to rescue the headstones.

Nazar estimates that there could be up to 100 headstones under the stretch of road, and maybe more. Photos show them lying flat and closely packed, some face down and some face up. They had been covered over by the road surface. Many of the stones appear to be intact. Volunteers say most seem to date from the first part of the 20th century.

“This is the biggest discovery of matzevot in Lviv [used as paving] I can remember,” Nazar says.

He says the stones will be transported to the Yanovskoye Jewish cemetery, where more than a dozen gravestones rescued from the street in 2010 and 2017 were taken.

Jewish cemeteries were demolished and used as quarries to pave roads and for other construction projects, both during World War II under the Nazis and during the post-war Soviet period, in Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, and elsewhere.

On Thursday, dozens of volunteers brave rainy conditions to join the fourth day of the rescue effort.