Unearthed headstones tell story of Jews of Brest

PAULA SLIER

Known to Jews as Brisk, the city is on the Polish border along the Bug River. Over the centuries, it has changed hands repeatedly. At different times it was part of Lithuania, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it finally became part of the newly sovereign state of Belarus in 1991.

I first heard its name from my grandmother, Sarah, who was born in Brest, but was ashamed to admit it. She didn’t have fond memories of the place, and the pain of her childhood didn’t dim as she aged.

But the one thing she’d sometimes mention was the Bug River. Our family jokes that the meshugas (craziness) in our genes comes from our ancestors drinking water from this river.

A few years ago, my father and I visited Brest. “My mother would’ve thought we were meshuganas (crazy) to come here,” my dad chuckled throughout our trip. But he couldn’t hide his excitement when we finally set eyes on this family “heirloom”.

“I always imagined it as a huge river with craft and barges sailing up and down,” my father exclaimed from its shore. He was sorely disappointed.

“I’m looking at it, and it’s dirty and full of green moss. I intended to put my toe in the water, but I’m afraid something will bite me!” he declared solemnly. “One thing I’m convinced of is that our family would’ve really been meshugana to drink from it in the first place, and certainly meshuganas after they’d done so.”

Humour soon gave way to sadness and loss. Exploring the Jewish world of my grandmother’s youth uncovered precious little. It’s as if a Jewish community that accounted for more than half of the city’s inhabitants before the Nazis murdered nearly 30 000 of them in 1942 has simply disappeared. In 1944, when the Soviets liberated Brest, only nine Jewish citizens were alive.

There is a magen david on the ground in front of the house where Begin was born. The Great Synagogue is now a movie theatre. Another synagogue serves as a residential building, and the former Jewish hospital, while still a hospital, has nothing Jewish about it. If you look closely, you can see indents on the door frames where the mezzuzot were once placed.

Symbolically, the only Jewish reminder of this now vanished world are tombstones that date back to 1830 – and even they haven’t escaped the vestiges of war.

In the early 1940s, the German army and Nazi SS totally destroyed the main cemetery. In the decades that followed, the Soviet authorities desecrated whatever tombstones had survived to give way to a stadium and playing field.

No-one remembers who was the first to take the headstones to use as pavements, and in the basement floors of peoples’ homes and gardens, but what locals do remember is that no-one stopped them.

“As children, we played football with the skulls and bones we found here,” a stooped over, elderly man, walking past where the cemetery used to be, tells me in Russian. A football track has since been built with a parking area and sports club at the one end, and an open field at the other.

When I look around, I see broken Jewish tombstones lying among the unruly grass in the backyard of people’s homes.

“No-one stopped us. We were children,” the old Belarusian man continues. “I don’t remember about tombstones. Maybe they took them, maybe they didn’t. No-one was caring about that.”

But in the past 15 years, these tombstones have been surfacing all over the area. While some are broken, others are intact with distinctive Hebrew inscriptions.

Neighbouring the cemetery was once the Warburg Colony, a housing district built for the beleaguered Jewish community after World War I. Soon, however, the houses were full of Jewish orphans whose parents had been killed in the war or in violent programs. They, in turn, were murdered by the Nazis who subsequently used the houses for Soviet prisoners of war. All the buildings have since been torn down.

While they were being demolished, Debra Brunner was in Brest. Brunner is the founding director of The Together Plan, an initiative that empowers Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to set up and run projects.

“We got a call from a reconstruction company that they were clearing the area to lay foundations for a new supermarket, and had uncovered a whole lot of headstones,” she says.

“It was incredible. They were digging, and headstones were literally coming out of the ground. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was bizarre,” she reflects.

“They were everywhere. They were in total disarray. The builders were very kind and concerned, and wanted to know what they should do with them.”

Brunner knew exactly what to do. She asked them to put them in a pile, and later arranged for them to be moved to Brest fortress where already more than 1 200 stones from the same cemetery had been collected and stored. About 150 Jewish gravestones were uncovered. Some were still intact; others broken and damaged.

“We are campaigning to raise funds to create a memorial wall using these reclaimed headstones,” says Brunner.

“The idea is, where possible, to make a detailed list of all the people who were once laid to rest here, and return the tombstones to their rightful place. It’s vital that we preserve the past to create a symbol of hope for future generations.”

At this stage, there is nothing above the ground where the old Jewish cemetery used to be.

“As soon as we’ve raised enough money, we will build a memorial wall from the headstones to be placed there. We will be working closely with the authorities and the local community on the project. Afterwards we hope to digitise the information and save it in an archive,” she says.

The Together Plan is building a Jewish journey through Belarus. The memorial wall will feature along the route, and help visitors to discover the country’s rich Jewish heritage.

Earlier this year, while digging the foundation of an apartment building in Brest, construction workers discovered human remains believed to be from hundreds of Jews killed by the Nazis. Some of the skulls bore bullet holes, suggesting that the deceased were executed.

The tragedy of the Holocaust was twice-enforced because so many people disappeared into mass pits without a name or outward sign of where they had died. Since biblical times, it has been customary for Jews to erect a tombstone at a gravesite to serve as a symbol of honour to the deceased. It also gives friends and relatives a place to visit.

But like so many Jewish families, there’s nowhere in Brest for mine to be remembered. And so, I’m left wondering if some died in this newly discovered mass grave? Or if one day I’ll find their names on a recovered tombstone in the memorial wall to be built?

I’ve always believed it’s not when a person’s body ceases to function that death comes; it’s when he or she is forgotten about. Helping to collect the tombstones is the least I can do to preserve the memory of my family and a corner of the world where Jewish history and memory almost came to an end. But not forever. If we do something about it, people will return, and they will find more than history. Miraculously they will find the seeds of new Jewish life, and so much more.

If each of us donated just a little to the memorial, I’m sure we could have it built in no time. Even R100 would help.

To donate, visit https://thetogetherplan.com/en/brest-headstones/