Proiect la cimitirul din Zgurita

Here's what wikipedia has to say about my village:

"Zguriţa or Zguritsa (Yiddish: זגוריצה, Russian: Згурица) is a commune in Drochia district, Moldova, composed of a single village, Zguriţa. It was founded in 1853 on an area of over 1,000 acres rented by Jewish settlers in Bessarabia. It was the last Jewish agricultural settlement in Moldova. In 1878 the new Jewish owner canceled the lease of the estate and Zguritsa lost its status as a Jewish agricultural colony. From 1890 to 1903 further Jewish settlement in Zguritsa was prohibited by virtue of the May Laws issued on May 3, 1882.

In 1897 Zguritsa's Jewish population was 1,802, comprising 85 percent of the total population. Following the First World War, the village fell under Romanian control. Agrarian reform in Romania in 1922 granted plots of land to 150 Jews of Zguritsa. In 1925 the 193 members of the local loan fund included 40 farmers, 25 artisans, and 113 tradesmen. In 1930 there were 2,541 Jews in Zguritsa (83.9% of the total population), supporting a kindergarten and an elementary school both of the Zionist Tarbut organization.

In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia as the Moldavian SSR, closing privately-owned businesses, and religious schools. The agricultural community was collectivized. A year later, pro-Nazi Romanian forces reoccupied the village. On July 3, 1941, Jews who did not flee were rounded up and deported to Transnistria, where most of them died of starvation and disease.

Today, the population of the village is largely Moldovan, with some Russians and Gypsies. The Jewish cemetery is in ruins, and the former Tarbut school was expanded as a public school. "

We did a project to clean up this cemetery this past weekend. It is one of the only few Jewish cemeteries in Moldova. It was my buddy Justin's project, so he did all of the organizing. He got several PC volunteers to come stay at his place for the weekend, and he invited a Jewish organization to come out for the day and help us out. About 10 ten girls from the capitol showed up, and we worked for several hours cleaning the place up. It's going to take a lot of more work, but we made a good start by cutting lots of limbs down that were hanging on the tombstones.

A few PC Volunteers and friends hanging out before we started working.

When we got to the cemetery we realized there was more work than we anticipated.

Most of these stones date back to the 1800's. All of the script is written in Hebrew until you get to the mid 1940's. You can see on the graves when the Soviet regime starting impacting the community, because the script changed over from Hebrew to the Cyrillic alphabet from the Russian language.

Here you can see how the trees and shrubs were taking over the graveyard.

President Michael Leikin and Kevin Moses Cohen, this pic's for you.

As you can see, Neal is holding a Moldovan lawnmower.

It turned out to be a great day with some good people. Hopefully I can start up another project with those girls soon to finish cleaning up the cemetery.