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The director of the 19th century Warsaw Jewish Cemetery is reconstructing the records of its 250,000 graves.

Przemyslaw Israel Szpilman told The Associated Press Friday that 60,000 records of the cemetery’s headstones, records destroyed by the Nazis, have been recorded since the project began five years ago. He expects to finish in 2012.

The project will help those seeking to find the graves of their ancestors.

Szpilman told AP that he has not yet located the grave of his grandfather, Jankiel Szpilman, who was buried in the cemetery in the 1930s.

Jankiel Szpilman was a distant relative of Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose survival story was told in Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning film “The Pianist.”

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