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Day One
Lwow
The only cemetery which exists is post Holocaust, which made it of
no particular family interest.. Supposedly there are a few older
graves there, but I did not see any. The gravestones are largely
in Cyrillic.
Day Two
Zalosce
The cemetery is at the edge of the stream that flows from the lake.
It is only an empty lot, covered neatly with grass, with a handful of broken
and illegible stones. The lot is rectangular and slopes up the hill
and reminded me of Machzikei Hadas Cemetery in Pittsburgh, where some of
my Zalosce relatives are buried. The area is not fenced in
or marked with a sign. The ground shows no indication that it contains
graves. There are sign of animals grazing, but there were no animals when
we were there.
Zbarazh
The cemetery is located on a small street to the left of the road leading
in from Zalosce. There are about 120 gravestones with varying degrees
of legibility. Some are under trees and are at odd angles.
There are others that are illegible, broken, face down etc. There
is a large area in the middle with no stones - apparently cleared.
Moderate vegetation seems to be controlled by goats.
The writing on the stones faces away from the graves and in most cases
includes surnames. Two graves were in Cyrillic and each referred
to two post-War burials. The cemetery is not fenced in.
Surnames of interest to people I know included Segal, Schaffel, Warhaftig,
Kiwitz, Somerfleck and Sass.
Tarnopol
The cemetery is fenced in and all the graves are in one corner.
Maybe two hundred or more. Alex Dunai said that there were more on
earlier visits he paid and that part of the cemetery itself is outside
the fence and is used as a garage. The grave area has high weeds,
but later in the week we saw a man cutting them. Most of the stones
are are standing and fairly legible - many completely legible. Almost
all have surnames - sometimes the names are in Latin letters. The
inscriptions are facing away from the graves.
Names of interest included Segal, Sass, Kaczer, Cackes, Augenblick,
Liebergal, Hochbaum (from Grimaylow), Kaner and Karash.
Day Three
Perehinsko
One of our party - Ephraim Pickholz - was born in Perehinsko in 1918
and left at age three. This was where his mother's family lived.
The cemetery is about the size of a good-sized house and yard and is fenced
in. All the stones were broken off at the base, although one had
three lines left at the bottom:
Rozniatow
This cemetery is fairly large with a couple of hundred stones, many
at precarious angles. The area is partially fenced and contains quite
a few trees which disturb both the stones and access to them. The
inscriptions face away from the graves and are often fairly legibly, but
do not include surnames. One of the first stones we saw was for someone
"ben Pinchas Yosef" who seemed to be the uncle of the man in Perehinsko.
I did not consider it significant and did not photograph it and later could
not find it again.
At the far end, I saw some stones with surnames - some in Hebrew letters,
some in Latin letters - and one was Rechtschaffen, which is a family of
Ephraim's Perehinsko cousins. When I turned to call to the others,
I saw that many of the stones had surnames on the reverse side. (In
general the reverse sides were badly eroded.) I also saw that the
Rechtschaffen grave was also Pinchas Yosef, so it seems that the lone Perehinsko
gravestone is in fact one of Ephraim's family. We found several other
Rechtschaffen graves - mostly marked with surnames on the reverse side.
There were a number of graves that specifically said they were people from
Perehinsko.
Dolina
The cemetery site is a grassy, unmarked, unfenced hillside. There
are a handful of stones that are nearly completely buried.
Bolechow
The cemetery is across a couple of hills and is unfenced. There
are maybe two hundred vertical gravestones. The inscriptions face
away from the graves and in most cases surnames appear on the reverse side.
Often full names. The reverse side usually has a number inscribed
as well. I did not have the presence of mind to see if the numbers
seemed to include the fallen and missing stones or were of more recent
vintage.
I photographed one Goldshlag grave, one grave of a woman from Skalat
and one 1826 grave of "the Rabbi" of Zidachov (grandson of "the Rabbi"
of Rozdol).
Day Four
Rozdol
The large fenced in, hilly area has quite a few stones which are broken,
face down and otherwise illegible. Not a surname anywhere to be found.
Horses left their marks even on the stones themselves. I took photographs
of everything I could. There seemed to be a few that had "Pickholz
given names," but nothing I could identify. The mayor told us that
one man had taken stones to line his basement, but died the following day
- so no one else tried it. She claimed that all the destruction was
done by the Nazis.
Brezdowitz
This village is not even on the local maps and is adjacent to New Rozdol.
We went there because there were Pikholz families there a hundred years
ago and because the mayor of Rozdol knew that there was a cemetery.
The cemetery site is at the top of a hill, across some fields and is so
thickly wooded and overgrown that we could not identify the cemetery site.
We gave up looking after fifteen-twenty minutes, as in any case the locals
said there were no graves or stones visible. The wooded area has
quite a bit of recent garbage scattered around the periphery.
Day Five
Skalat
The cemetery is a soccer field, which we knew in advance, but we went
because Skalat and Rozdol are the two largest concentrations of Pikholz
families. At the edge of the soccer field Alex saw a pile of some
fifteen gravestones, neatly stacked. We could read parts of the top
two - Wolf Goldstein (1915) and Shimshon Segal (1914), not the grandfather
of Shimshon Segal of Rehovith, as I had originally thought. We could
also see that there was a Plesner HaLevi in Sivan 5675 (1915) and a a Chaje
Jeti Elo... or Eld... - both near the bottom of the pile. The mayor
came by while we were there and when I suggested that the town should arrange
these few remaining stones in a more respectable way, he suggested that
we pay people to do so etc etc.
We also went to the site of the Holocaust memorial outside town.
This memorial includes about twenty gravestones that had been taken
from the cemetery, standing around the central memorial. So that
the stones would all be the same height, some were cut at the bottoms,
where the names appeared.
After leaving Skalat, I saw that the film was not in the camera properly
and I have no record of the shameful way Skalat continues to treat the
Jewish dead even today.
Grimaylow
This was the only cemetery site that the local people had trouble telling
us how to find, despite that it is in a residential area. It is small,
open, overgrown and gives no indication that it is a cemetery site.
The local people said that there is a memorial there - it consists
of a wooden stake with a small sign that says "To victims of Fascism."
The sign is on the ground.
Day Six
We had light rain and wind, so this day was more difficult than the
others.
Stanislawow
This is a very large fenced in (more or less) area - the fence is just
a few years old. There is a central section with several dozen post-war
graves (in Cyrillic), but the rest of the cemetery has no stones with inscriptions.
Many horizontal stones - sloped on both sides - are in good condition.
But the vertical stones- with the inscriptions - are mostly gone.
The ones that are there are mostly broken and fallen, though there are
a few that are erect and legible. The inscriptions face the graves.
I had little expectations for family finds in this cemetery and the rain
did not make it easier to challenge that assumption. It was very
slippery and navigation was difficult.
The old Stanislawow cemetery is under a movie theater.
Nizniow
This cemetery is up a hill and accessible with difficulty. The
local people said that there is little left and the weather discouraged
us from trying.
Buczacz
This was a big surprise as there are probably two hundred or more standing
stones. The cemetery is unfenced and on a hillside and the wind and
rain made it difficult to get around. The inscriptions face away
from the graves and usually do not have surnames but the reverse side often
has first and last name and even dates. Here as in Bolechow, there
are numbers on many of the stones.
There are many stones broken, face down and otherwise illegible, but
the legible stones are the majority. One of the local people told
us that the cemetery is only half its original size and that the approach
road itself goes through the original site.
I was disappointed to find no Pickholz, but did find Zehler, Kiwetz,
Dlugacz and Schwebel, the last three of which we know as Skalat names connected
to Pickholz.
Lysiec
By this time the weather had cleared.
Here too we were surprised by the number of standing stones - probably
a hundred or so at various angles. The cemetery is fenced, but we
had to climb across a fallen piece of fence to get in. There are
a handful of stones with surnames. Inscriptions face away from the
graves and the reverse sides are eroded, so it is hard to tell if there
were ever surnames there. There was one grave as early as 1815.
In Lysiec I didn't need last names to find what I wanted, but was disappointed
to find no trace of the family of Rabbi Juda Gershon Pickholz, who was
the town rabbi for forty-four years, until the beginning of WWI
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