INTRODUCTION:
During October 2001, my guide Regina Kopilevich from Vilnius,
and I, spent a few hours in the Lygumai Jewish Cemetery. The
cemetery is about 2 km outside of Lygumai. Our time was limited and we
spent our time documenting at least half of all the legible tombstones
in the Jewish cemetery. Regina is very good at reading Hebrew inscriptions
on tombstones. Many of the stones were unreadable, either because the inscriptions
were too faint or nonexistent, due to extreme weathering, or because the
quality of the original stone was poor. We found 4 tombstones that had
last names as well as first names. The other 34 tombstones that Regina
had time to read, only had first names. Regina also read some of
the letters, by feel, with her fingers, like someone reading Braille. I
took photographs of most of the tombstones that Regina could read. The
tombstones that I took photos of are indicated in the rightmost column
of Index 1.
There is a rock wall surrounding the cemetery, which is located on the
side of a steep hill. The tombstones are not in straight rows, but for
location purposes, we tried to map the tombstones into rows. Row "A" refers
to the tombstones at the top of the hill. Row "B" is below row "A", closer
to the bottom of the hill.
Example: A1 means grave number 1 in row A. Grave A2 is right of grave A1.
(Grave No means tombstone number within that particular row, going from
left to right.)
Barry Mann
( Please email all corrections
to me, at mannbarry@gmail.com )
