Aerial photographs Luftwaffe pilots snapped of western Ukraine in 1941 that once helped Nazi forces overrun the Soviet Union, are being used to identify and preserve Jewish cemeteries.
The use of Luftwaffe archives and other ingenious tools began in 2015 with the establishment of the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF), the largest-ever international project of its kind, which has since fenced more than 100 Jewish cemeteries in seven countries on a modest annual budget of $1 million provided by Germany.
In the western Ukrainian town of Buchach, the cemetery’s borders became obliterated after the murder of the area’s 10,000 Jews, but are clearly visible in Luftwaffe photos.
ESJF has also begun using engineering drones that can map a cemetery in a fraction of the time and cost a team of surveyors would require.
Over 10,000 Jewish cemeteries are in various degrees of risk and are still being degraded today at an alarming rate due to unregulated construction and vandalism. In a recent development, the municipality of Klimintow 20 miles from Krakow inaugurated a $90,000 sports center built on an old Jewish cemetery.
{Matzav.com}
FYI, the pictured plane is an American A-20 Havoc, painted in the D-Day pattern. This distinct and striking paint scheme was used to avoid confusion during the D-Day invasion.