Lo Tishkach

The Lo Tishkach educational project is part of a larger Lo Tishkach initiative for surveying and preserving Jewish cemeteries in the FSU and EasternEurope, and collecting and preserving information about them. The project supported by Genesis Philanthropy Group began in 2008 and ended in 2011. Between 2008 and 2010, 980 young adults between the ages of 16 and 30 from nine local Jewish organizations from Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania took part in the project.

The project included 54 informational seminars and training sessions, which introduced participants to Jewish history and culture, and taught them information-collection techniques for expedition work at cemeteries and mass graves. In two years, the project collected information and populated a database of locations and current conditions of 366 cemeteries in Ukraine and 650 cemeteries and mass graves in Latvia and Lithuania.

More than 5,000 people attended exhibitions and presentations given by the project's participants in Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania. The project is now educating local teachers on the history of mass gravesites and ways to preserve them.