4. Cooperation and stakeholder engagement Raising awareness on the ground Engaging local and regional authorities

4. Cooperation and stakeholder engagement

Avital aspect of long-term protection is creating positive rapport with local authorities, identifying proactive leaders who are willing to take on the role of guardians, and developing the legal and institutional settings to guarantee the support these vulnerable sites require. Just as vital is outreach to local communities, civil society and grassroots organisations who often take it upon themselves to save cemeteries and whose work could be connected to other stakeholders such as descendants and foreign-based NGOs. The ESJF shares stories of cooperation on social media, on the project website, and in our Catalogue of Best Practices for Jewish Cemetery Preservation. Although the pandemic limited some potential stakeholder engagement opportunities, significant developments were made nonetheless. Throughout the course of the second pilot, the ESJF signed cooperation agreements with the Jewish communities of Hungary and Slovakia, worked with the Jewish community of Croatia and Croatian Ministry of Culture, and connected with numerous lay leaders in all project countries to build essential rapport and raise awareness of our project on the ground.

Below are a few highlights from our experience cooperating with stakeholders:

The unique Jewish communal landscape in Hungary compelled us to hire a Jewish community engagement officer to serve as a liaison to the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (MAZSIHISZ), the representative organ of local Jewry. The engagement officer had extensive prior experience with MAZSIHISZ, and in addition to supporting the survey process by alerting caretakers when a survey was scheduled to take place, she helped raise awareness of the project among municipal and federal authorities.

Among the engaged parties were the Deputy Secretary of State and the Chairman of the Public Foundation of Jewish Heritage in Hungary (MAZSÖK). Both expressed interest in survey results upon receiving updates on ESJF activities in the country.

A total of eleven mayors proved to be unaware of the existence of a Jewish cemetery in their town or village. Two mayors from the towns of Lónya and Fényeslitke expressed a commitment to protecting their local cemeteries upon being informed of their existence by ESJF.

In Croatia, the Ministry of Culture offered essential support by connecting us with the University of Zagreb, where two accomplished graduate students within the Anthropology and Jewish Studies departments were recruited to conduct surveys.

We held several productive meetings with the Jewish Community of Zagreb, including one with the Israeli Ambassador to Croatia, wherein we discussed the project goals and desired outcomes. All engaged parties agreed upon the importance of the project and expressed a desire to be involved with our continuing activities.

During the project, we were contacted by Dr. Srđan Matić, a World Health Organization representative and former Secretary General of the Jewish Community of Zagreb who expressed interest in volunteering. Dr. Matić is a preeminent scholar on the topic of Jewish cemeteries and heritage in Croatia, and his insights have proven invaluable to the project.

The United Jewish Communities of Ukraine partnered with ESJF utilising our open-access database to locate and install new memorial stelas at four Jewish cemeteries in Zaporizhzhia Oblast: Pryyutne, Solodkovodne, Novodarivka, and Novozlatopil, each of which were once maintained by small Jewish agricultural communities. In the wake of the Shoah, these communities had been virtually wiped out, with only the Solodkovodne Jewish cemetery containing any post-war tombstones. After decades of neglect, the cemeteries were at risk of disappearance, but the new memorial stelas will help preserve them for future visitors. This work represents exactly why our database exists, and we are proud to have played a role in keeping the memory of these communities alive.

The new memorial stelas in Novogarodka and Priyutnoye, installed by the United Jewish Communities of Ukraine with guidance from the ESJF.

Raising awareness on the ground

Where possible, ESJF surveyors were encouraged to engage with cemetery caretakers and local community members to: 1) inform about and raise awareness of the project, 2) build rapport, and 3) gather information that may be critical for our research. Occasionally, these informal exchanges yielded very useful historical information.

In addition to these direct exchanges, each surveyed site was marked with a printed marker to inform visitors and passers-by about the survey and the organisational/

funding background. Bilingual markers are produced for each project country in the local language and in English. Surveyors informed the sites’ owners, often municipal authorities, about their actions and requested them to allow us to place these markers on-site. It is crucial to do this in cases where the cemetery is demolished and there is no apparent sign of its existence, or when the site is unprotected. As a sign of care, attention and recognition, these markers have brought us many supporters and future donors, often on their quest of finding ancestral graves.

The English-language version of the marker reads:

This Jewish cemetery was surveyed by the ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative in [YEAR] as part of the pilot project “Preserving the Jewish Cemeteries of Europe (EAC/S10/2019)” co-financed by the European Union.

Engaging local and regional authorities

Surveys needed to move along fast: to keep with project targets, each survey team aimed to survey between 3-5 sites a day. Local authorities were approached at each site visit, establishing an initial link, while the work of building rapport and exploring possible forms of cooperation was continued by our senior management.

Mayors, local politicians, and Jewish community leaders have often been keen to offer their support and we observed a snowball effect within regions where the ESJF has previously fenced sites. Similarly, in Slovakia and Croatia, where the ESJF was yet to be involved in direct protection projects, the survey work led the Jewish communities in these respective countries to approach ESJF to explore the possibility of long-term cooperation. Moving forward we aspire to strengthen support in areas where ESJF has previously worked, as well as establish new initiatives for cemetery protection in countries where we have not worked previously.