In exile, since the destruction of the First Temple and especially since the destruction of the Second Temple, the children of Israel have been scattered to the four corners of the earth – a few here, a few there.  They were oppressed; they escaped; they were exiled; they were slaughtered; they were murdered.  They found for themselves resting places in foreign lands, under the impulsive rule of yet another leader, who would receive them today with open arms and a bloated purse, and expel them tomorrow penniless.

More than 1,400 years have passed since Jews first settled in Eastern Europe.  They established magnificent communities, planting tender seedlings that would grow into a splendid orchard and in the future bear glorious fruit – from the great commentators of the Torah of Israel, to the great Poskim of Jewish law, and to the Hassidic movement, which was established in the region of Podolia by the holy Baal Shem Tov more than 250 years ago.

There, in the same lands that did not smile on the Jews as residents, they dwelled, and they revitalized themselves, and they were oppressed – and, for short periods of time, they dwelled peacefully – millions of Jews throughout the generations.

And there they also died.

And every community, with the almost constant ups and downs of life, had a cemetery.  There a man would be brought, an ish Yehudi, to his final resting place, when his neshama took leave of his body and ascended, as happens to every person in his time – or as the result of pogroms which were frequent during many years.  

With the campaigns against the Jews across Central and Western Europe, with the blood libels and pogroms of hundreds of years up until the Russian Civil War (and the pogroms that immediately preceded it), not one Jewish community was saved from oppression.  Jews were assaulted, robbed and trampled.  They were murdered and butchered to such an extent that the few who remained were forced to pick up their beds again and to flee from fear of oppressive tyrants.

And then emerged the threat of the Holocaust, which was a diabolical chapter in all of Europe, leaving behind smoldering ashes, a scorched path of our brother's graves, piles of ash and corpses tossed away with satanic cruelty after a methodical process.  Millions of our brothers were exterminated across Europe.

In the 1900s, for about 70 years, the Communist Party ruled in countries united by necessity under the name of the "U.S.S.R."  For about 45 years, the U.S.S.R also ruled satellite states, where a great portion of the inhabitants were never endowed with love of Israel.

Ancient cemeteries, which in their time were located outside settled areas, were suddenly surrounded by populated developments.  They were seized by governments or by greedy neighbors and turned into exclusive real estate developments or simply pastures and fields.  Gravestones were smashed and uprooted from the gravesites and used for flooring or to pave walkways or as a foundation for fences or simply as a protection against the wind by passersby, who found in the "deserted" areas that had been cemeteries great locations for parties and celebrations.  Entire cemeteries were turned into pasture.  There could no longer be heard the voice of the prayers of the living for the dead but rather the mooing of cattle and the chirping of birds.  Hikers would leave trash in the cemeteries and destroy and desecrate everything in their path.

The graves of our brothers from various periods have been hidden.  Hundreds of thousands of them were murdered and slaughtered during periods of hatred, their gravestones desecrated and their corpses uprooted – corpses of holy Jews, the courageous of G-d, their souls cursed to die al kedushat Hashem.  They were used as fertilizer on fields with no respect for the needs or the cries of their neshamas.  This has happened because of lack of knowledge and lack of resources.

And millions of our brothers, the great of Israel, holy and pure, who were buried in their final resting place until the Messiah comes, are again in severe danger daily of being uprooted.  And thousands of cemeteries call out in a still small voice to pierce the firmament, a voice that is not heard because they are desolated and in mourning for their own destruction.  This horrible ruin befalls them, and still we fail to heed their horrible cry.

And even now, while you are still reading these lines, local residents are continuing to steal more land from these cemeteries – some big, some small, some hidden, some known – to grow cauliflower or to graze sheep.  And so, in each and every moment, additional cemeteries, a portion of them from a magnificent era that was and is no longer, are in danger of disappearing from the face of the earth.  Another grave is uprooted, another gravestone shattered and discarded, and no one knows the destiny of the remains buried there.