Lyubcha Forest
In 2013, my brother Ryan and I journeyed to Lyubcha, Belarus to visit the birthplace and childhood village of our great great grandfather Himann Kivelevich. No one in our family had returned since Himann left in 1889.
Located on the edge of the Neman River and the Naliboki forest, Lyubcha was 90% Jewish before 1942.
Today, the only Jews left are ghosts.
The forest outside of Lyubcha hid and sheltered the Bielski Brothers’ Partisans during the war.
We got to walk through the forest and play a song for our ancestors…
Lyubcha Cemetery
We also walked all over Lyubcha looking for the Jewish cemetery where our ancestors, Himann's extended family, are buried. When we finally found it, we were shocked to find the gravestones stolen, the land neglected and several large trucks parked IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CEMETERY…
We prayed, we sang, and we decided that we cannot let this be. When we got back home to California, we launched the Lubca Peace Restoration Project to protect this sacred cemetery.
Part of our resistance to the erasure of Jewish people and culture in Lyubcha and throughout Eastern Europe is to live, to create, to bring our ancestral ways of life forward. Waystation’s original klezmer song lyubcha, named after Himann’s home town, is dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Shoah, and to the future generations, for whom we keep the culture alive.
With lots of help from our extended family and friends, and with support from Tamara Vershitskaya, a local historian and museum curator, we were able to install a fence around the remaining open space of the cemetery and commission a beautiful gate at the entrance that says "Lubcha Cemetery" in Hebrew, literally Lubcha House of Eternity. As far as we know the cemetery is now the only clearly visible remnant of the Jewish community in the whole town.
