Lawmaker Meets Jewish Officials Over Destroyed Spanish Graves

Serious concerns about the “destruction and desecration” of ancestral Jewish cemeteries in Spain by construction and archaeological research prompted a New York City congressman to arrange for representatives of three Jewish organizations to meet with Spain’s ambassador to America at his Washington, D.C., office.The meeting of the Spanish ambassador, Carlos Westendorp y Cabeza, with the Jewish leaders took place July 26 in the offices of Rep. Edolphus Towns, a Democrat of Brooklyn. At issue are the disturbances of Jewish graves during the building a residential complex in Catalonia and a road in Andalusia, and the return of more than 500 skeletons that archaeologists have excavated from Jewish graves in Barcelona, some more than 50 years ago, that are currently in storage.“It is painful to know that these holy remains are dragged out of their resting place,” a representative of an Orthodox umbrella organization, the Central Rabbinical Congress of America and Canada who attended the meeting, Rabbi David Niederman, said.Mr. Towns told The New York Sun that he felt the meeting was productive. “The ambassador understood how important this was, and not only to the Jewish community,” he said.The deputy head of mission at the Embassy of Spain, José Marco, told the Sun, “We are taking this very seriously.” He said these were not intentional but the “accidental finding of graves” during public works and other construction. Spain is proud of its Sephardic Jewish heritage, he said, and the embassy is working with a federation of Jewish communities on these issues.A member of the steering committee of the Conference of Academicians for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries who also attended the meeting, Bernard Fryshman, said the removal of skeletons violated property rights, religious rights, and human rights. His position was supported by the third Jewish leader at the meeting, Rabbi Lazar Stern, a representative for a worldwide Orthodox organization protecting and preserving Jewish gravesites, Asra Kadisha. Referring to the hundreds of skeletons held in storage since being taken from an archaeological site in the Montjewic neighborhood of Barcelona, Mr. Fryshman said humans were not “laboratory specimens.” “You don’t dig first and then examine,” he added.Mr. Towns, who has been active in preserving the African Burial Ground, the discovery of which halted construction on a site in Lower Manhattan in 1991, agreed that digging up of graves was “offensive to all who cherish human rights.” He has joined Rabbi Niederman and others in requesting a meeting with Spain’s minister of justice and the director general for the coordination and promotion of religious freedom.Rabbi Niederman said it was in the interest of Spain to see that what is left of its once flourishing community remains undisturbed. Jews lived in Spain for more than 1,000 years, often rising to high places in Spanish society, before being expelled in 1492. A professor at New York University, Lawrence Schiffman, noted that monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella were introduced by a Jewish statesman. Noted Sephardic scholars and writers such as the rabbinic authority, Shlomo ben Aderet (“RaShBa”), philosopher and poet Judah Halevi, and Catalan rabbi and commentator Nachmanides lived in Spain. The famed philosopher and scholar Maimonides (“Rambam”) was born in Spain.An adjunct professor at the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico, Stanley Hordes, said he was not surprised that municipal planners chose the path of least resistance in siting roads and building on lands sacred to local minorities. “It’s not unique to Spain,” he said, citing instances in New Mexico and elsewhere.Rabbi Niederman traveled to Barcelona late last month to supervise the re-interment of 170 bodies exhumed during the residential construction in the Catalonian town of Tarrega. Mr. Niederman said that while there, he was upset to hear new reports of bulldozers unearthing skeletons. He also said metal screws were found among some of the bones.Rabbi Stern said Asra Kadisha’s expert, Chiskiah Kalmanowitz, had concluded that the screws were from torture and that the graves did not have caskets that might have accounted for such a find.“These people suffered 500 to 600 years ago and now they are again feeling pain from the descendants of those who once persecuted them,” Rabbi Niederman said.Asked about the screws, a professor who specializes in Sephardic history at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, a central academic institution of Conservative Judaism, Benjamin Gampel, said he did not know about these particular cases and would need to await the “sober, scholarly judgment” of the historical and archaeological community on facts such as which centuries the bones were dated.The Spanish Embassy’s Mr. Marco told the Sun that the Spanish government is working on agreements with municipalities on procedures to follow when these issues arise in the future. The government was close to an agreement in the case in Andalusia, where road builders in Lucena had uncovered remains from a Jewish burial area that may date as far back as the 4th century C.E.But Rabbi Niederman counters that such agreements could not be made locally because the overwhelming majority of the descendants of those interred now live abroad. The federal government in Spain “cannot walk away” from the issue, he said.He added that while he and his colleagues came away from the meeting in Washington convinced of the ambassador’s sincerity, “Their sympathy has to be proven by actions.”

Lawmaker Meets Jewish Officials Over Destroyed Spanish Graves

Lawmaker Meets Jewish Officials Over Destroyed Spanish Graves

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