Shchyrets. The Kirkut – Part of the Cultural and Historical Heritage of a Galician Town

Before the Second World War, Shchyrets was considered one of the centres of Jewish life in Galicia. The old Jewish cemetery on the eastern edge of the settlement is part of the cultural and historical heritage of a vanished Jewish community.

 

Shchyrets, Lviv region. The Jewish cemetery

The kirkut lies on the northern slope of Zolota Hora (Golden Mountain), and there is no way up to it through the dense, impenetrable thickets and the absence of even a hint of a path or trodden grass.

 

The Jewish necropolis revealed itself to me on the third attempt, after failed tries to break through the thicket of thorny shrubs. Only the certainty that it was 'somewhere here' helped me take the Shchyrets wilds by storm, and before my eyes appeared toppled matzevot covered with moss-like growths. The felling of the ancient trees led to a riot of wild undergrowth, which very quickly seized its place in the sun. The perimeter of the burial ground is about 300 metres long. The number of gravestones is hard to count, and lichen has covered the inscriptions made in Yiddish and Hebrew.

 

Some memorial markers have been cleared of the grassy cover that quickly destroys the stone and the history laid out upon it. On the gravestones of pink Terebovlia sandstone, epitaphs and symbolic drawings are carved. Someone, it seems, does visit the cemetery and tries to preserve the memory of the dead.

The year the burial ground was founded is unknown; the cartographic marking of the kirkut dates to 1880. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Jews made up about 80% of the entire population of Shchyrets. The settlement had a school for girls and boys and a synagogue. On the Market Square there were around 60 shops owned by Jews. The residents of Shchyrets have kept fond memories of their Jewish neighbours, with whom they lived in harmony and mutual understanding. Everything changed with the start of the fascist occupation in June 1941. More than 1000 Jews were deported to the ghetto in Bibrka and to the death camp at Bełżec.

In the upper cemetery are buried people who took part in the public and cultural life of the settlement and made their valuable contribution to its development. Among those buried is the grave of Samuel Luft, burgomaster of Shchyrets in 1900-1902 and head of the Jewish community. In 2018 Samuel's relatives visited the grave with a memorial prayer.

 

My thanks to Mrs Stefaniia Derevatska, director of the museum of memory of the victims of Stalinist repression in Shchyrets, for the information and hospitality. 

Coordinates of the Jewish cemetery: 49°38'57"N 23°52'2"E