An international group of 18 volunteers from Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic and Turkey, with the help of seven Polish scouts from Poznań, is putting in order the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.
Work on the Jewish cemetery on Okopova Street in Warsaw began on August 16 and will continue until August 24. The organizer of the project, the Cultural Heritage Fund, is cleaning the cemetery for three years. This year, together with the Association "One World", the fund decided to invite young people from abroad to take part in the project.
Participants will take part in discussions, lectures and thematic walks related to Jewish culture in Warsaw, as well as visit the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Warsaw Synagogue.
"The cemetery is largely difficult to walk through, and access to many cemetery quarters is difficult due to overgrown wild plants. Thanks to the help of more than 100 volunteers, we managed to tidy up almost 3 hectares of the cemetery, "said Ola Vazak, coordinator of volunteer projects for the Jewish Heritage Foundation.
The cleaning works consist mainly of cleaning the oldest part of the cemetery and removing the broken branches of trees. Preliminary cleaning of the cemetery is necessary to enable qualified environmentalists and visitors to access historical tombstones. All works are supervised by the director of the cemetery, the Jewish community in Warsaw and the Jewish Historical Institute. Founded in 1806, the Jewish cemetery in the Wola region in Warsaw is one of the largest in the world, it has revealed over 80,000 tombstones.