20 August 2003
Holocaust center in Brest want monument erected to mark former Jewish cemetery
The Holocaust center in Brest has petitioned the city government to allow it to erect a memorial sign in
the area of a former Jewish cemetery, now occupied by the Lokomotiv stadium.
As the center's leader, Arkady Blyakher, told BelaPAN, Nadezhda Yashchuk, chairwoman of the City Soviet of Deputies, has given her general consent. According to Mr. Blyakher, the site gets a lot of foreign visitors, who wonder why there is still no sign marking the
former cemetery.
This week, the center intends to file an official request with the Brest City Executive Committee. The stadium displaced the cemetery in the 1950s, although tombstones were removed during Word War II.
"It sounds sacrilegious, but 1st Minsk Street in Brest is paved with tombstones from the cemetery," said Mr. Blyakher. More tombstones have been found in other parts of Brest and underneath the stadium itself.
The design for the monument, made by Brest architect Nikolai Vlasyuk together with students at the Brest Polytechnic School under the Holocaust center's order, envisages the use of tombstones, Mr. Blyakher said, adding that the sign could be placed on an unoccupied piece of land in front of the stadium. "We realize that we need an official permit to launch the project, and a lot of finance to extract the tombstones and fill the gaps with asphalt," he said.
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