9. Fifty Years Later (1)

Since those tragic, days fifty years have passed. In the intervening decades, the Soviet regime shut its eyes to the fact that most of those murdered in the Holocaust were Jewish, and tried to erase from the local history the shared past of the Jews with many other nations for hundreds of years. It was as if the Jews had never existed, and as if their bones were not buried in the mass graves of those murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. On the tombstones and statues set up here and there was inscribed, at most, that "Soviet citizens" were those who had been slaughtered en masse.

A local museum was set up in Kletsk, which contained exhibits from as far back as prehistoric times, but there was no sign or rememberance of the Jewish population, which dwelt there for generations, 500 years and more, and which consisted of 65 to 70% of the total inhabitants. Pictures of the three historic churches and the Islamic mosque which served the handful of Tatars are displayed on the walls, and only the six synagogues are absent.

Natives of Kletsk in Israel, the United States and Canada organized and insisted on bringing the Holocaust victims to a Jewish burial (Kever Yisrael) and erecting a fitting monument on their grave. The organization saw this as a sacred duty. It was necessary to argue strongly with the local authorities. And then, in light of the exchanges that began to mark the last years of the rigid Soviet regime, permission for this initiative was granted. On the large mass grave had been displayed a stone which had not one word inscribed on it, and on the side was a small sign, which said that in this place were buried "Soviet citizens killed in the great national war". Now, after the work was completed, there is a tombstone with a Star of David on top and on which is inscribed the truth, in Russian and Hebrew. On the second mass grave, on which there was nothing, we erected a stone to the memory of the Jews who were killed within the ghetto, when their resistance was discovered.

We also received permission from the local municipal museum to set up a wing dedicated to the history of the Jews of Kletsk, through all the historical eras when they were the majority of the town's population. We collected as many pictures of the past Jewish community in all areas of life as we could in Israel, from Kletsk natives. The exhibition was displayed for a long time. After it was removed, there remained a permanent corner dedicated to the memory of the town's Jews.

Also the old Jewish cemetery, where most of the stones had been looted and pulled down, received attention from the United Kletsker Relief. With our own hands we cleaned up the area and fenced it in. We made sure that a directive went out from the authorities that this place would not be touched, for building or any other need. A sign was set into the entrance on which is written that this site is sacred. And thus the organization fulfilled its duty to remember the town's Jews. To the Kletsk natives scattered across the face of many nations, and to their descendants, from now on their ancestors' grave will be a pilgrimage site.