Eastern Europe: Holocaust burials initiative

An international initiative to give proper Jewish burials to Holocaust victims in mass graves will be launched in Eastern Europe, according to the World Jewish Congress website.

According to the short joint World Jewish Congress and Russian Jewish Congress statement on the WJC website, the organizers expect thousands of international volunteers to be inspired by the project.

"Dignity Return" is being organized by Russian Jewish Congress president Yuri Kanner, in cooperation with World Jewish Congress (United States) chair Rabbi Marc Schneier.

“As we move further away from the Shoah, the number of those who can share a personal experience from this atrocity grows smaller," Schneier declared. "As a result, it is increasingly up to those who were born after the Holocaust to preserve and protect their stories and these sites so that Holocaust revisionists will be unable to change history, and our call of ‘Never again’ will continue to resonate from one generation to the next.”

The goal is to bury remains of mass execution victims - in Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine and Estonia - in a manner acceptable to halakhah (Jewish law).

Additional details will be provided on January 27, 2010, International Holocaust Remembrance Day.