Juliet Coffey '09 grew up in an Irish Catholic household and arrived at Dartmouth with little exposure to Judaism. She became fascinated with the religion after learning about it from her roommate Zoe Dmitrovsky '09 and wanted to experience Jewish culture first hand.
This June, Coffey and Dmitrovsky will both travel with 12 other students of varied denominations on Dartmouth Hillel's sixth annual Project Preservation trip to restore a Jewish cemetery in Yurburg, Lithuania. Dmitrovsky was a member of last year's Project Preservation, and she returns this year to co-lead the trip with Anna Stone '08 and Caitlin Kelly '09, who is a member of the Dartmouth staff.
"My experience last year was incredible, and I really fell in love with the project," Dmitrovsky said. "It was so powerful to me to look around at the different faces and know that not everyone was Jewish but we were all there for the same reason. Everyone was there to preserve the memory of the Holocaust."
This is the first year that Project Preservation travels to Lithuania. The first four groups worked on cemeteries in Belarus, while last year's group traveled to Druzhkapol, Ukraine. Before spending five days in Yurburg, the group will visit Krakow, Poland to tour the site of Auschwitz concentration camp, as well as Kaunas and Vilnius, Lithuania.
Once in Yurburg, students will clean, document and create a map of headstones in the cemetery. They also plan to erect a fence around the site and hold a dedication ceremony with local and regional authorities after the project's completion. Rabbi Edward Boraz, executive director of Dartmouth Hillel, will accompany the students on the trip.
"One of the overarching goals is to respond in a very meaningful way to one of the most horrific events in the 20th century, if not in all of human history, which is the destruction of the Jews of Europe," Boraz said. "Then of course to become sensitive in such a way as to be more conscience of potential genocides that can possibly occur."
Annie Rittgers '09 applied for Project Preservation with the desire to learn more about her family's past.
"My grandmother escaped Germany during the Holocaust, but a lot of her family was killed," Rittgers said. "I feel like I still only know textbook-style stuff about the Holocaust. I wanted to force myself to see it and experience it."
Rittgers has been preparing for the trip by reading her grandmother's documentation of her escape from Germany to a Jewish settlement in China and her subsequent arrival in the United States.
"I would like to come away with a better perspective," Rittgers said. "I think it's a good thing to be aware of the fact of what humans are capable of."
Project Preservation began after Dr. Michael Lozman, a dentist from Albany, N.Y., visited a dilapidated Jewish cemetery in his hometown in Belarus. Lozman wanted to return to the cemetery to restore the property and presented the idea to the Tucker Foundation, for which his nephew worked. According to Boraz, the Tucker saw Lozman's vision as an opportunity to "expose students to the problem and horror of genocide" and expanded upon the idea by devising a 10-week pre-trip curriculum and trip itinerary.
After researching this year's site, which is situated in the ancestral town of one of the project's donors, Boraz discovered that a group has already begun restoration of the cemetery and has raised funds to construct an archway and fence around the area. The group also compiled a book documenting the Jewish history of Yurburg.
"We're coming in to really crown or complete the work that they began," Boraz said. "It's a wonderful partnership."
In order to prepare for the trip, students attend two retreats and meet on 10 consecutive Wednesday nights to discuss readings from books such as "Night" by Elie Wiesel. Students raised money for the trip by selling grilled cheese and matzoh at Dartmouth and promoting the project in their hometowns. Dartmouth Hillel and two donors outside of the Dartmouth community, who will both accompany students on the trip, also contributed towards the cost.
