KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
Ben and Cindy returned to the U.S. with photographs of Lud- vipol. I mailed copies of the pictures to our landtzmen in the U.S. and Israel, which caused a great deal of excitement. 1 Ben’s visit triggered a plan by the Ludvipol organization for the survivors to return to Ludvipol as a group and erect a proper memorial for those who had been slaughtered. A committee, which included Arje Katz, himself an important supporter of the memorial project, raised funds, mostly in the Unit - ed States and Canada, from Ludvipol survivors, myself included. Shmuel Shafir, president in Israel of the Jewish Organization of Ludvipol Survivors in Israel, who has dedicated his life to the proj - ect of remembering our martyrs and keeps the organization alive, made arrangements with Viktor Borisovitz Palchovsky and other local Ukrainian authorities for the preparation of the site and me- morial stones. A Jewish contractor from Rovno was hired, and he enclosed a 180-meter by 90-meter memorial site with an iron fence. In 1993, a delegation of twenty-three Ludvipol survivors from Israel and the United States returned to the town for the unveiling of the memorial stones. It was a long journey for them, literally and emotionally. Most of them flew to Kiev and then rode seven hours by bus to Rovno. Proudly walking through Ludvipol (now Sosno- voye) with flags, they showed the community that the remnants of the Jews are still very much alive and kicking. A big ceremony was held to dedicate the new memorial. The survivors participated, as well as about a thousand local villagers and officials. After the ceremony, Shafir approached the local officials and asked for their help in locating additional mass graves. One sur- vivor, now in her nineties and living in Israel, had been hiding in nearby bushes and witnessed the killing of about sixty people, who had been shot in the street by the Germans after being dragged out of their hiding places during and after the liquidation. Their bodies had been dumped into two mass graves in the middle of town. Sha- fir and the others were insistent that these graves, too, be located, and the skeletons dug up and buried properly at the memorial site.
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