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Rogachev cemetery

My wife Cindy and I, along with our driver Alec and translator/guide Irina,  departed Mogilev at around 10 AM on Thursday, August 19, 1999, for Rogachev. We  traveled along highway M 20, following the path of the Dneiper River as we passed by Bykhov and a few other villages before turning onto highway A 181 to Rogachev. The ride was spectacular, with forests, farms, rivers  and lakes, and lots of goats, cows, horses, ducks, chickens, turkeys, and other animals. There was almost no traffic on the journey. 

We reached Rogachev, one of my ancestral towns, around noon and immediately went to the government building where the local historical museum is located. Unfortunately, the museum was closed because the worker was on vacation. Our interpreter found a very old man getting ready to depart the building and asked him about the location of Jewish sites in the shtetl. He was not Jewish, but said his next door neighbor was an old Jewish lady and could help us. He squeezed into the car and directed us to his apartment building a few blocks away. We rang the doorbell and there was no response. One of the other residents who was sitting in the yard said the women we were looking for had gone out, but she could take us to the home of another old Jewish women who lived nearby. We walked with her to an old wooden house typical of the shtetl houses that our ancestors lived in. She came out of the house to greet us and gave us the story of how she survived the Holocaust as well as the fate of the Jews who did not hide in the forest or flee on foot to the East. She told us how the people burned their own homes so they would not fall into the hands of the advancing German army. When I asked her where the synagogue was, she pointed to a house just across the street from her home and related that the synagogue had been burned down and that a family residence had been built on the site. She also said that her father had been the head of the hedder (Jewish school) in the town, but that the building no longer existed. By this time, the old man that we had met in the government building arrived again and brought the leader of the Jewish community, Ginda Kapelan. I showed Ms. Kapelan, a women of about 50 years, the Exordinary Commission list for Rogachev, which I had obtained, from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum before my trip. She and the old women recognized most of the Jewish families that were on the list and it brought tears to their eyes and they recited the names. I offered to leave the list with them, but they said they had no where to store it.

Mrs. Kapelan told us there were actually two Jewish cemeteries in Rogachev, the old and the new. We departed by car to the old Jewish cemetery. It was located on a plot of ground that overlooked the Dnieper River. There were cows and goats grazing in the cemetery which, was not really maintained, but at least it wasn't overgrown with trees and vegetation as we found the Mogilev Jewish cemetery. I would estimate that there were approximately 400 stones still remaining. Some had been weathered over time so they could no longer be read. Others had sunk into the ground and were only partially readable. The earliest stones probably dated from the 1700 an 1800's, but there were post revolution  (1917) stones in one section of the cemetery which were in the typical Soviet style, with little or no Hebrew, Russian inscriptions, in many cases the etched image of the deceased. We even saw grave markers that were made of sheet metal because relatives could not afford a stone monument. The metal monuments were rusting apart and deteriorating rapidly. I noticed large areas of the cemetery where there were no stones, but from the way the land had settled, there were obviously burials on the land. I also saw graves that had been dug up and asked Mrs. Kapelan what had happened. She said that as people had immigrated from Rogachev to Israel or the US, the people who could afford it had reburied their relatives in the "new" Jewish cemetery because it was better maintained. While there was a fence around part of the cemetery, it was not secure. There did not appear to be any signs of vandalism, but there were kids playing in part of the cemetery. We took lots of photos of stones, but did not have time to adequately photograph every marker. None of us could really read Hebrew and in fact there was no one left in the town who could read Hebrew. One other item of interest was the many sheds adjacent to the cemetery. When I asked what they were, I was told it was a brick factory that had been built on part of the cemetery around 1946. No one seemed to know what happened to stones that were in that part of the cemetery, but from the way the cemetery was laid out, it appears they built over the oldest part. Burial in this cemetery ceased in 1972.

Mrs. Kapelan guided us to the "new" Jewish cemetery which was on the outskirts of town and opened in 1972.  Actually it was a community cemetery with a "Jewish section". It appeared well maintained for the most part, but because of immigration, there was no one to take care of many of the Jewish graves and they looked untended and overgrown. We were told that the Jewish section was full and there were no more empty plots. Mrs. Kapelan pointed out some very well maintained graves where the site was totally covered by squares of stone or marble to prevent the growth of vegetation. This was done by people who were immigrating to Israel in the next few days and wanted to be sure that the graves would be maintained.

I asked Mrs. Kapelan if anyone had a list of names of Jews buried in either cemetery. Unfortunately, none existed. I asked her if there was someone who could prepare such a list and gave her some money to get the project started. She said she would only be able to do the stones with Russian writing, since there was no one to read Hebrew left in the shtetl. I also asked her to prepare a list of the current Jewish residents, with their addresses. She said she already had such a list for the people on pension, but did not have it for the younger population. She said that no Rabbi ever visits this shtetl and she said I was the first American she could remember coming to visit Rogachev. I asked her what the old Jews of the town needed and she said vitamins, medicine, and eyeglasses. I told her we could easily get the people eyeglasses from Minsk if she could gather the lens requirements and we could also arrange to have vitamins delivered to her for the elderly. Mrs. Kapelan explained that there were several old Jews who were house bound and could not go out to have their eyes measured. I told her I would make arrangements in Minsk for an optometrist to make house calls so we could get eyeglasses for these people. (Note: Before departing Minsk, I left funds with Yuri Dorn, President of the, Union of Religious Jewish Congregations in the Republic of Belarus, to transport an optometrist to Rogachev and two other nearby shtetls so the eyes of the shut-ins could be measured and arranged to have glasses delivered to them.)

Four or five months after my trip to Belarus, I received an email message from Frank Swartz of EEJHP in Minsk informing me that Mrs. Kapelan had sent him a list of the burials in both of the Rogachev cemeteries. I would to thank Mrs. Kapelan for compiling the lists and Frank’s wife Galina for translating it to English.  As was mentioned above, this list is not a complete listing because it does not include the oldest stones that were only inscribed in Hebrew.  Therefore, if anyone with knowledge of Hebrew visits Rogachev, please contact Mrs.Ginda Iosifovna Kapelan, 61 Lenina Street, apt 22, Rogachev. Telephone 22741.  She can take you to the two cemeteries and perhaps you can make a list of the gravestones that have Hebrew letters.  These can be added to the list we have below.

UPDATE: Yuri Dorn, President of the URJC of Belarus <iro@open.by> in December 2003 reported the destruction of the Rogachev Old Jewish Cemetery. According to his information, part of the cemetery is being cleared on grave stones to make room for the construction of two houses. He also believes that there are plans to use the stones for use in the construction of the houses. The three pictures below document the destruction.

© 2000 Belarus SIG