To: All Vishnive Families and Descendents
From: Dvora Helberg
Date: December 12, 2004

Documentation of the Jewish Cemetery in Vishnive (near Volozin, Belarus) on the Internet

Dear Friends,

I would like to notify you that we have built a new Internet site documenting the Jewish Cemetery in Vishnive. In this site, the following can be found:

1. A photograph of each tombstone which remains in the cemetery.
2. A list of the names of the deceased and dates of death as marked on the tombstones.
3. A map of the cemetery with the exact location and numerical ID of each tombstone.

The site address is:
http://www.geocities.com/biography1915/projeng.html

The cemetery renovation project has been done under the devoted supervision of Mr. Yuri Dorn, President of The Religious Jewish Communities in Belarus, and his dedicated crew.

The work that has been done so far:

1. Clearing and removal of the wild vegetation of trees, thorny bushes and grass which has grown uninterruptedly in the cemetery for more than 60 years.
2. Preventative treatment of vegetation to suppress regrowth.
3. Removal of waste which had been dumped in the cemetery for many years.
4. Erection of most toppled tombstones.
5. Cleaning the tombstones as much as possible.
6. Photographing each tombstone.
7. Mapping the cemetery and the location of each tombstone.
8. Preparation of a list of the names of the deceased and dates of death as written on the tombstones. Reading some of the stones required special effort because they had greatly deteriorated during the years, and their markings became almost illegible.

Yuval Helberg and Yoav Rogovin volunteered and built the internet site and inserted all the cemetery information which had been collected.

What else is left to be done:

I. Building of a new Memorial marker at the site of the mass grave in the cemetery where the first group of Jewish victims was gunned down in 1941. We were promised that the work will begin this coming spring.
II. An addition to the existing Krave Street Memorial. The memorial will now state clearly that all the two thousand victims were Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and their local collaborators. In addition, the area around the memorial will be gardened.
III. Continuation of the preventative treatment to suppress vegetation regrowth. Such treatment takes about two years to become permanently effective.
IV. The building of a fence around the Jewish cemetery.

Sincerely yours,

Dvora Helberg