Page 32 - aruba today

A32 FEATURE
Tuesday 25 sepTember 2018
Baptist pastor finds calling in post-Holocaust cemeteries

By VANESSA GERA east by Soviet forces. More
DMITRY VLASOV than 5 million were dead
Associated Press by war's end. Under the
ROHATYN, Ukraine (AP) — German occupation thou-
Steven Reece pulls a shield sands of Christian Poles
over his face, takes a weed risked their lives to help
whacker in hand, and be- Jews, but many did not
gins trimming tall grass in act, and some joined the
an overgrown, tick-infested plunder and destruction.
Jewish cemetery in western Reece, no longer a minis-
Ukraine where tombstones ter, says he wants to help
lie toppled and broken. local Jewish authorities
For years now, Reece, an struggling to maintain 1,400
ordained Southern Bap- cemeteries across Poland
tist minister from Texas, — a legacy of a country
has been cleaning Jewish once home to the largest
cemeteries and erecting Jewish community in the
memorial plaques at mass world. That population has
grave sites in Poland, and dwindled from 3.3 million
recently Ukraine. The re- on the eve of Germany's in-
gion, once Europe's Jewish vasion, to 20,000 today.
heartland, saw millions of Mass grave sites continue
Jews shot and gassed by to be discovered, and the
Nazi German forces dur- In this photo taken on Aug. 29, 2018, an old Jewish cemetery in Rohatyn, the site of a Jewish Heri- challenge is made more
ing World War II, sometimes tage project, close to Lviv, Ukraine. difficult as Poland's econo-
with the help of local col- Associated Press my grows and construction
laborators. booms across the country.
The 63-year-old American flict," Reece said, taking has been with him since his nization run by an Ameri- Reece said some in the
says cleaning up old cem- a break during a recent boyhood in the American can couple, Marla Rauch- Jewish community at first
eteries is his way, as a Chris- clean-up operation in Ro- South, where the mistreat- er Osborn and Jay Osborn, wrongly suspected he was
tian, of honoring Holocaust hatyn, Ukraine, which be- ment and segregation of who have been gather- seeking converts.
victims while supporting the fore the war was part of Black Americans was insti- ing Nazi-damaged head- "I don't deny who I am — I
surviving Jewish communi- Poland. tuted in law. stones scattered in the am a follower of Jesus —
ties here. "I saw the Jewish ceme- "I was in the seventh grade town and bringing them to but that's the not the point
He also hopes his mission tery as a way to bring Jew when Martin Luther King the cemetery in Ukraine. of what I do," he said. "The
can help alleviate the bit- and Christian together in a was assassinated. That Reece first came to the re- point of what I do is to rec-
terness and misunderstand- common place where they made a tremendous im- gion in the late 1980s when oncile."
ing that still festers some- could work together with pact upon me," Reece said he was on assignment in Poland's Chief Rabbi Mi-
times between Christians one another." during an interview in War- Poland as a photo reporter. chael Schudrich said that
and Jews. Reece explains Outside Ukraine, Reece saw. "And when I encoun- After graduating seminary, initially, some were puzzled
that he is troubled by the and his team cleaned sev- tered the issue of Jewish he served for 12 years as a by Reece. "Steven is so
failure of European Chris- en cemeteries in Poland this Polish history, due to what pastor in Warsaw and near- unique, we're not used to
tians who mostly stood by summer, including one in happened here, I saw that by Otwock, learning Polish people like that," he said.
passively as the Nazis mar- Oswiecim, the town where there is a great injustice." and gaining a deeper un- "But as soon as I met him I re-
ginalized, then persecut- Nazi Germany ran the Aus- Part of his mission involves derstanding of what hap- alized that he was the real
ed and killed their Jewish chwitz death camp. encouraging diaspora pened in Poland during thing," Schudrich added.
neighbors. Reece, who grew up in Jews to work with local WWII. "There are special, unique,
"To me it means simply Texas and is now a resi- volunteers in Polish towns The country was invaded saintly people in the world.
bringing together people dent of Peachtree Corners, to continue the cemetery from the west by Adolf Hit- It transcends religion, na-
who are separated by dis- Georgia, says he is driven maintenance work. In 2010 ler's forces and from the tionality, and ethnicity. q
tance, by space, by con- by a desire for justice that he founded an Atlanta-
based charity, The Matze-
vah Foundation, which
takes its name from the He-
brew term for headstone.
The foundation brings vol-
unteers to Europe from the
Brentwood Baptist Church
in Tennessee and partners
them with Jewish descen-
dants to care for their an-
cestral cemeteries.
Since 2012, his organization
has carried out 28 projects
in 14 different locations with
the help of nearly 1,000 vol-
unteers, including some 250
In this photo taken on Aug. 29, 2018, U.S. citizen Marla Raucher Americans, but also Israelis, In this photo taken on Aug. 29, 2018, Jay Osborn, a Rohatyn
Osborn, a Rohatyn Jewish heritage project leader, left, shows local Poles and Ukrainians. Jewish heritage project leader, cleans an old Jewish cemetery
volunteers the gravestones at an old Jewish cemetery in Ro- The recent work in Rohatyn in Rohatyn, the site of a Jewish Heritage project, close to Lviv,
hatyn close to Lviv, Ukraine. was organized by Jewish Ukraine.
Associated Press Rohatyn Heritage, an orga- Associated Press