(JNi.media) Polish rivers’ water levels have fallen to record lows this summer, revealing the remains of even more of that country’s history of misery and suffering, including Jewish tombstones and long dead Soviet fighter pilots and their plane, AP reported.
“The Vistula River is hiding no end of secrets. They are everywhere,” said Jonny Daniels, head of a Jewish foundation called From the Depths, who’s been examining the shallow parts of the Vistula river—which runs through the capital city of Warsaw—discovering stone fragments adorned with Hebrew lettering.
“From the Depths was set up to bridge the past to the future,” according to Daniels’ website. “The past has brought some tremendously dark and difficult times. However, rather than forget these difficult times we must learn from the past in order to shape and build a better future.” The organization’s mission is to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and “to give a name to those who were brutally murdered in the dark days of the Holocaust and to continue the message to the next generations of those who survived.”
Two weeks ago, according to AP, a man who had spotted those fragments of Jewish tombstones took Daniels there. Some have already been taken, but a few fragments are still lying on the riverbed. Daniels is planning to take volunteer students there to search and return as much as they can find to the Brodno cemetery in Warsaw’s Praga district, on the “Jewish” side of the city.
“Jewish history is buried in the Vistula,” Daniels told AP.
The Brondo was the resting place of some 300,000 Jews, but only 3,000 tombstones remain there today. Some of the original stones were taken to be used as building materials or to reinforce the river banks.