Sosnitsa is a few hours north and then east from Kyiv. It is part of the same district, Chernigiv, that includes Nova Basan and Kozelets--two ancestral villages--but it is a good deal further northeast.
Sosnitsa is a big town / very small city. At one point the Jewish population of Sosnitsa was quite large; but by 1939 that number was reduced to 370 Jews. Today, there are 6 Jews in Sosnitsa. Most if not all of those 370 people are in mass graves (ravines) at the outskirts of town. We visited two of the mass grave sites, just beyond the town's potato fields and adjacent to a large apple orchard.
One of the remaining six Jews in Sosnitsa is Yakov Zaleevsky. While Yakov's father was off fighting with the resistance, his wife and children were murdered with the rest of Sosnitsa's Jewish population. After the war, Yakov's father returned. He later re-married, and Jakov was born.
Yakov is a wonderful man; and tremendous force of good. Working with his family, he built a memorial to mark the mass grave site. There is a small wooden enclosure surrounding a clearing in the forest; and within the clearing are five stone circles, each filled with human remains and covered with earth.
Near the gate, Jakov pointed out strawberries. Nature and time heal, recycle the elements...and yet still the ground is soaked with blood and the red color returns.
During the Nazi era the town's Jewish Cemetery was vandalized - stones broken, mausoleums opened, obelisks overturned. And in the Soviet era, tending to religious sites was hardly a priority. Because the surviving community is so small - 6 - and mostly elderly people, the large cemetery has reverted to forest.
When we began working, on Sunday, about 20 post-1960 stones were visible in an area covering about 10 x 30 meters.
Over three days, with Yakov on scythe, neighbors on chain saws and weed whackers, Dartmouth students in gloves, and on rakes, clippers, shovels, axes, and crowbars, the cover of locust trees, stinging nettles, maple and box elder saplings, was trimmed back...and dozens of stones, tombs, and grave sites dating back to the mid 19th century were revealed.
We organized: there were choppers at the forests edge; haulers removing the brush from the cemetery; throwers tossing the thorny matter up into a truck, where stompers flattened the load. Truck load after truck load was hauled away.
Once the boundaries were cleared, Dartmouth students hauled fence panels while local craftsmen began to pour concrete supports and weld the panels together.
Within the boundaries, the Rabbi and Michelle (a Dartmouth student who speaks Russian) translated the headstones (from Hebrew and Ukrainian respectively); Michelle also photographed the stones; and Mark, another student, mapped their locations.
The rest of the group continued cutting, clearing, cleaning stones, righting them, and cementing broken pieces together.
By yesterday morning the fence was up. The front, back, and sides - the entire cemetery - was clearly visible; and clearly a cemetery.
That open space was something like 100 x 75 meters. Students were tired, hands and shins covered with sores from the thorns. Arms itchy from stinging nettles and bug bites. Necks and faces red from the sun. And all dehydrated from the sun, work & 100 degree temps.
At 11:00 the cemetery was re-dedicated in a ceremony led by Rabbi Boraz with full participation of the group.
We had a mid day feast with borscht, boiled potatoes, cabbage slaw, garlic rolls, and strawberry blintzes for desert...and then had the long drive back to Kyiv, and then flight to Krakow.
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