Stolpce Cemetery Restoration
In April 2007 Melissa and Barry McCurdie and David Rubin visited Stolpce. They were appalled to discover the terrible state of the Jewish cemetery. The cemetery today is only about 20% of the size that it once was. Several houses have been built on land that once was part of the cemetery. Behind the back cemetery fence there is an empty field with a very large mound of gravestones which had been gathered up and dumped there.
On their return, they embarked on a program of renovating the small piece of the cemetery which remains. Melissa and David's mother, Sonia Rubin (nee Milcenzon) and her husband Henri funded the first and second phase of the restoration. Yuri Dorn of The Jewish Heritage Research Group of Belarus managed the restoration and did an excellent job. The restoration effort involved cleaning up the cemetery, repainting and mending the fences, lifting the gravestones from where they lay beneath the soil and photographing and cataloging them.
This phase of the Restoration was completed in late 2007
Yuri Dorn took a Rabbi and an engineer to the site. He had the input of several senior Stolpce residents who told him about the desecration of the cemetery, as they were eyewitnesses to it. He has identified 3 additional projects to achieve a more complete renovation and restoration of the cemetery:
1. Regarding the land, the "empty field" on which the mound of stones lies which was also part of the cemetery, the Rabbi has said that to simply move those gravestones into the existing cemetery would do more harm, as there are probably still graves on that land. Yuri has now obtained official permission to incorporate that field back into the cemetery and it will be possible to uncover the gravestones which may still lie beneath the soil and take the gravestones out of that heap.
This phase of the Restoration was completed in early 2009
2. On another side of the cemetery is a warehouse that is used by the local Kolkhoz (co-op) to store wood. Apparently that too stands on land that used to belong to the cemetery. The senior Stolpce residents have told Yuri that many gravestones are in the foundations of that warehouse.
3. The senior Stolpce residents also informed Yuri that many gravestones were just discarded and lie 20- 30cms (7-10 inches) beneath the soil between the fence of the cemetery and the Niemen River.
We now have a database of over 150 tombstones available online and some of us have already identified gravestones belonging to our ancestors.
If you are interested in helping the restoration effort, please contact me and I will forward information to you.