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Project to properly bury Holocaust victims is planned

September 1, 2009

NEW YORK (JTA) -- An international initiative to give Holocaust victims interred in mass graves a proper Jewish burial will be launched in Eastern Europe.

The Dignity Return project is being organized by Yuri Kanner, president of the Russian Jewish Congress, in cooperation with Rabbi Marc Schneier, chairman of the World Jewish Congress American Section.

The project's mission is to bury the remains of victims of mass execution from  Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine and Estonia in a manner acceptable under Jewish law.

Kanner and Schneier expect the initiative to inspire thousands of volunteers from around the world, according to a joint news release.

“As we move further away from the Shoah, the number of those who can share a personal experience from this atrocity grows smaller," Schneier said in the statement.  "As a result, it is increasingly up to those who were born after the Holocaust to preserve and protect their stories and these sites so that Holocaust revisionists will be unable to change history, and our call of ‘Never again’ will continue to resonate from one generation to the next.”

The founders of the Dignity Return initiative will present details of the project on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27.
 

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