Graves of local Holocaust survivors will be adorned Sunday, May 3, with special markers. The community day hosted by Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati seeks to honor more than a hundred survivors buried in the UJC Montgomery Cemetery.
The marker was designed by a local artist and Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati (JCGC) Board member. It's a round, metal medallion on a stake, with an enameled design including the six-point Star of David wreathed in barbed wire and olive branches, and the word "Remember." It includes the Hebrew word for Holocaust, "Shoah," and the word "zachor" in Hebrew letters, meaning "remember."
The markers are similar to metal military or fraternal organization medallions often placed beside graves, and aren't meant to be removed like flags placed during certain holidays.
"We will place them and hope against every hope that they stay in place forever," say Karen Zanger, JCGC ex officio president, tells WVXU.
The project was conceived in 2020 by a committee of Jewish Cemeteries trustees, including Holocaust survivor Henry Fenichel, and three children of survivors: Ray Warren, Sandy Kaltman, and Gail Ziegler.
A few markers already have been placed, but the bulk will be installed Sunday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Community members are invited to register to attend and help with the placements. Henry Fenichel will provide opening remarks.
"We will have storytellers who will be standing at the graves of a number of individuals from all kinds of countries, and they will try to relate the life story of the person from before the Holocaust, during [and] after their immigration here, and their life since getting to Cincinnati," Zanger says. "It could be a quite revealing way to understand how even though the grave may look like that of other people in the cemetery, their lives were very different."
Zanger notes the Board researched all kinds of records and worked with the Holocaust & Humanity Center to identify which graves should receive markers.
Family members also were allowed to opt out of receiving a marker.
"Not everybody wants to be identified as a Holocaust survivor. It's the entire theme of many people's lives, and if they did not speak of it during their life, they might not want to be identified as a survivor in their death. We went through all due process to make sure that the folks that we had identified were actually willing to have their grave marked, and of course, we'll remove a marker if family or others feel certain that that person really did not want to be identified as such."
Zanger notes there were two waves of Holocaust survivors to immigrate to Cincinnati. While many escaped during World War II or came shortly afterward, she points out some arrived much later in the early 1990s.
"People will notice that many of these names are from Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Russia, because many Holocaust survivors were trapped behind the Iron Curtain and in the Soviet Union after the end of World War II, and endured Stalin after the Holocaust," she states.
For the purposes of this project, JCGC defines a Holocaust survivor as anyone who was subjected to loss of job, home, possessions, forced relocation or bodily safety at the hands of the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Most also lost family members.
"Many of us have immersed ourselves in the lore of the Holocaust, and many of us have gone to symbolic ceremonies where you sit in an audience, and it's very spiritual, it's often shocking, but it's an intellectual experience to come out to the cemetery and to take into your hands a marker and to walk to the gravestone of someone whose entire life can become known to you if you look into it," Zanger concludes.
"You can honor that person with your hands and feet. You can walk out there and you can place a marker and make an act of honor that will last. I think that's an involvement that not many people get these days in Holocaust remembrance, and we'd like to offer that to the community."
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