Your recent article concerning cemeteries and defunct burial societies points to the larger issue of what’s to become of the many comatose landsmenshaften (“A Plot With Painful Twists,” June 20).
Generally, with few exceptions, they are without known members or activities, but have assets in the form of cash and unused cemetery plots. One other thing they share is the memory of the shtetls of European Jewry that their organizational names typically bear. The OR Movement in Israel, developing new communities in the Negev and Galilee, seeks to perpetuate the names of those places for the roads, parks, schools and other municipal facilities.
May I suggest that the various burial and fraternal groups — the landsmen societies — contact OR at www.ormovement.org,
a nonprofit organization supported by the Israeli government, the Jewish National Fund and others.
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