28th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe
Jewish cemeteries: the Congress calls on local authorities to shoulder their responsibilities
The Congress decided, in a resolution adopted following a debate on the responsibility of local authorities with regard to Jewish cemeteries, that “these cemeteries should be considered to be part of our common European cultural heritage and local and regional authorities have a role to play in the protection, preservation, enhancement, management and maintenance of these burial sites as they are part of local history, whether or not there are currently Jewish populations living nearby”.
The resolution encourages local authorities to promote the protection and preservation of holy Jewish burial sites, engage in dialogue with the representatives of Jewish communities and encourage their national authorities to accede to the Council of Europe’s Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes so as to enable local and regional authorities to get involved therein, inter alia through the opportunity to participate in the European Route of Jewish Heritage. The Congress considers that these provisions apply under the same terms to the cemeteries of all other religious communities.
John Warmisham (United Kingdom, SOC) states in his report for the Congress that, according to the laws of the Halakha, cemeteries, and all other Jewish burial sites, enjoy a holy status even higher than that of synagogues. And in the spirit of that faith, “even if the gravestones have been removed the site retains its holiness and inviolability”.
Abraham Ginsberg, Executive Director of the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe (CPJE), pointed to the need for direct dialogue with the local, regional and national authorities in order to find solutions in keeping with Jewish laws and traditions.
According to Yossi Beilin, former Israeli Minister of Justice, there were some 20 000 Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe before the Second World War. Half of these cemeteries disappeared during the war and it is only in the past twenty years or so that efforts have been made to save the ones that are left.
In Western Europe, the desecrations of Jewish cemeteries in countries such as France, the United Kingdom and Germany are mainly acts of vandalism, whether ideological or not. Neo-Nazi and Satanist groups, operating on the night of the solstice or that of 20 April (Adolf Hitler’s date of birth), are held responsible for about a third of these incidents. In other cases, the culprits are not identified.
In Central and Eastern Europe, Jewish cemeteries are currently faced with a dual threat: vandalism and neglect. The Jewish communities living in this part of Europe left after the Second World War and the last remaining survivors emigrated after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a result, these cemeteries are, in most cases, no longer of interest to the public authorities. In the absence of Jewish communities, it has not been possible to continue preserving and protecting Jewish holy places, which are under threat from unauthorised urban development, vandalism or quite simply the erosion that time brings. Without protection and proper upkeep, graves suffer damage of various kinds, as in Bucharest, where, in 2008, the city’s oldest Jewish cemetery was turned into a dump site.
Anti-Semitism is another reason for the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. On 15 March 2015, some 300 graves were desecrated and gravestones tipped over and broken at the Jewish cemetery in the town of Sarre-Union in Alsace. According to Roland Ries, Mayor of Strasbourg, the target was “freedom” as well as “civilisation itself, because what differentiates us from animals, whose dead bodies are a prey for other animals, is burial and all the other rituals surrounding death”.
Mendel Samama, Rabbi of Strasbourg, pointed out that the public prosecutor has established the anti-Semitic character of the desecration. However, he drew attention to the reasons which may have led “these juveniles, who were not taught to be anti-Semitic and do not display hateful attitudes in their everyday lives”, to desecrate 300 graves. According to the Rabbi, “the ill from which our society is suffering is not only hateful anti-Semitism; the silent evil which is quietly destroying the fabric of our society is indifference”.