when my poetry group asked me why I wrote a poem about being jealous of a friend who visited her great grandmother’s grave, I went back to see the material that so frightened me in Yiddish.  It was now in English, and frightened me even more.

[Page 381]

Liquidation of the Jewish cemetery

By I. Rubinovitch

Translated by Zeev Sharon

Right after the occupation of the city of Lida by the Germans, the liquidation of the Jewish Cemetery began. Farmers from the neighborhood began to pasture their cows and later began to the smash gravestones and take stones for their private use. It went on like that also after the war with no interference.

In the mid-1950s, the city council forbade the few Jewish families that resided in Lida to bury their dead there. With no other alternative, they had to carry them to the cemetery in the town Ivye. The fast liquidation of the cemetery in Lida started at the beginning of the 60s. First, they destroyed the section closest to the shore of Lidzhika River with digging machinery. They dug [foundations] and built warehouses and various constructions for boats, speedboats and services for the artificial lake that was made with the waters of the Lidzhika River at the end of Postovska Street. After that, they also destroyed the section of the cemetery bordered on Postovska Street and broke the gravestones that still remained. All of this was done despite the protest of the Jews who still lived in the city. Many human bones were scattered on the surface of the ground. The Jews picked them up into a sack and buried them in the cemetery section that still survived at that time. At the end of January 1966, only a few gravestones were left at the center of the cemetery and even those were destroyed later.

Thus, the last remaining sign that evidenced the existence of a large and flourishing Jewish community in the city Lida was destroyed and obliterated