Conservation

Jewish cemeteries, much like their occupants, have often been the target of intolerance. Their tombstones were uprooted, shattered or reused as building blocks following crusades, expulsions, political and economic upheavals, or sheer vandalism.

© Christian Herrmann – Karczew Jewish cemetery, Poland, 2017

The last decades saw the foundation of several projects intended to document and conserve what was left of these places, and obliquely, of the memories they contain. In the coming years, this section of the PEACE portal will ask and help answer the following questions:

  • Jewish funerary culture: what is it?
  • Why should it be preserved? For whose sake?
  • Who should preserve it?
  • How should it be done?