Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia, by Catherine Merridale. 2002

Cemetery Repurposing: An Inadvertent Counter to Jewish-Cemetery-Desecration Memes. Gravestones, Cemetery Lands (Not Only of Jews!) Were Freely Repurposed

Recent Holocaust-related programs have falsely painted Poles a heartless, primitive people for not preserving long-abandoned Jewish cemeteries, and for repurposing long-unused Jewish cemeteries, including their gravestones (matzevot). Other reviewers have already described the overall content of this book, so I do not repeat them. Instead:

THE ONGOING RELEVANCE OF THIS BOOK IN THE LIGHT OF CURRENT EVENTS

The Soviet Communists waged war on religion, and this included the desecration and repurposing of cemeteries on a large scale. This became a rather graphic precedent of how cemeteries, belonging to a bygone era, can be treated throughout the Soviet bloc.

During the Nazi German occupation of Poland, the Germans murdered nearly all of Poland’s Jews, leaving behind countless Jewish cemeteries that had no remaining Jews to use them or at least maintain them. In this review, I focus on the information, provided by author Catherine Merridale, which unintentionally demolishes the anti-Polish images that have been created, particularly in media and in Holocaust Museums, on the long-unused Jewish cemeteries in Poland, and especially their matzevot (tombstones).

The customary American exhibits of matzevot, which are becoming more and more common, are subtle and manipulative. They take advantage of the fact that most American viewers know absolutely nothing of the realities of cemetery reuse, especially in the former Soviet bloc, and they thereby generate feelings that are unilaterally favorable to Jews (e. g, the politics of victimhood) and prejudicial against Poles. The viewer sees a matzeva and feels sorry for the human being that was identified by it. He then cannot help but conclude that Poles must be some kind of very base or primitive people for having repurposed the land of unused Jewish cemeteries, and for having reused the matzevot as paving or building stones. The truth behind such seemingly-reprehensible conduct, which in no sense was limited to Jewish cemeteries, is elaborated below.

The repurposing of the matseva (macewa) is also being highlighted, context-free, in Poland, by Lukasz Baksik. See: https://culture.pl/en/work/matzevot-for-everyday-use-lukasz-baksik

NOT ONLY OF JEWS! GRAVESTONES OF DECEASED RUSSIANS WERE RE-USED AS BUILDING BLOCKS FOR CONSTRUCTION

Catherine Merridale writes, “An extension to the Dinamo factory in Moscow was built on the consecrated ground of the cemetery that formerly belonged to the Simonov monastery. MANY OF THE STONES WERE TAKEN FOR THE NEW BUILDING, and the remaining space was used to build apartment blocks for the expanding workforce.” (p. 136; Emphasis added).

CEMETERY LANDS OF INTERNED RUSSIANS FREELY REPURPOSED FOR “FRIVOLOUS” (ENTERTAINMENT) PURPOSES

The author writes, “From 1920 the Soviets in several cities began to discuss proposals to turn old cemeteries into parks…Still in Moscow, cemeteries attached to the Alekseyev and Danilov monasteries became workers’ clubs and parks, while the Pokrovskoe cemetery was razed and leveled for a soccer field in 1924.” (p. 136).

RUSSIANS FELT NO GUILT ENGAGING IN RECREATION ON THE FORMER BURIAL PLACES OF RUSSIANS

Merridale continues, “The policy of obliteration worked. People who played soccer on the haunted ground would soon forget its origin. Migrant workers and new residents from distant villages would have no memory of the old landscape, NO SENSE OF DESECRATION. Very few city dwellers were even aware of the fact that their apartment blocks were built on bones.” (p. 136; Emphasis added).

Now compare all this with those Jews who try to lay a guilt trip on Poles (the PEDAGOGIKA WSTYDU), often for selfish, political purposes. They do this by complaining that Poles generally feel no sense of shame, guilt, or even acknowledgment of the fact that their homes in Warsaw are built on top of the ruins of the onetime Warsaw Ghetto, or that some of the village paving stones they are walking on were onetime matsevot (macewa), or that Poles are enjoying themselves playing soccer on land that was once a Jewish cemetery, etc.

NOT ONLY POST-HOLOCAUST JEWISH CEMETERIES WERE VARIOUSLY NEGLECTED, DESECRATED, LOOTED, OR CO-OPTED BY LOCALS

With reference to the cemeteries of interned Russians, Merridale comments, “The ‘disordered state’ of many graveyards was beyond the control of busy clerks; there was no one to stop the grazing and the chicken keeping; THE MARBLE AND THE BRONZE WERE PILFERED; and drunks slept well among the leaning stones.” (p. 137; Emphasis added).

RUSSIAN GRAVESTONES, ETC., WERE REUSED IN CONSTRUCTION ON A STAGGERING SCALE

The above-mentioned examples were no fluke. Just the opposite. Catherine Merridale continues, “By the 1930s, however, the effects of this neglect provided the Finance Commissariat with its chance to seize and recycle anything that was still worth stealing. Local soviets drew up lists of their graveyard assets, reckoning their value in tons of stone and negotiable metal. Gravestones, especially any that were made of fine marble, were removed for building projects. The older stations of the famous Moscow metro still contain LARGE QUANTITIES OF TOMBSTONE MARBLE (most of the marble for the statues on the platforms of the Revolution Square station came from the cemetery of the Don monastery). Iron, bronze, and granite were also taken, sometimes directly for industrial use and sometimes for resale. In 1931 a secret estimate concluded that the closure of old cemeteries would yield more than forty thousand tons of usable metal for the national industrialization drive.” (p. 137; Emphasis added).