ראהאטין

ראהאטין — בתי החיים

Rohatyn — the Jewish cemeteries

Old Jewish cemetery, on the hill off S. Bandera Street, Rohatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine

• TWO GROUNDS. The old one is on a hilltop off S. Bandera Street, with houses grown up around it; the newer one is at the northern edge of the town and was opened when the old ground filled before the war.
• The old cemetery is fenced with metal pickets on a concrete base, put up in 1998 and rusting since, and its gates are gone — so it is open. Signage was put up in 2023 explaining what the site is.
• AN OHEL WAS REBUILT HERE for three of the Stratyner rabbonim of Rohatyn. The people who rebuilt it do not say in public which three, so this listing does not name them.
• THE STONES CAME BACK FROM THE TOWN'S PAVEMENTS. Over five hundred matzevos and fragments have been recovered since 2011 — including a large pile taken out of the courtyard of the former Gestapo headquarters, where they had been laid end to end as paving for vehicles. On the ruling of the rov of Ivano-Frankivsk they were all returned to the old cemetery, and a memorial is being built to display them.
• The ground is cleared of undergrowth once a year. Between clearings it grows over, so what you find underfoot depends on the season.
• SURVEYED COORDINATES. The map point on this listing is the cemetery itself, measured on the ground by the ESJF survey — not a town centre. Where a kever is inside an ohel it will still need finding once you are through the gate, but the gate is now something you can navigate to.