In the center of Khmelnitsky town, near the crossing of highways (long ago it was a suburb of the town) there is an old complex that consists of three cemeteries: Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish. With time the territory of cemeteries become overgrown with thick forest while malicious intents of some people nearly destroyed the Jewish part of the complex. Highway and offices for municipal services were built near the territory of Jewish cemetery. It was in the times of totalitarian society, so nobody ventured to protest. With the time flow many old Jews died, and a great number of young Jews moved to other countries. The old Jewish cemetery was the last to disappear, but the small part of old Jewish cemetery survived stormy XX century.
Jewish community had insufficient funds for fundamental reconstruction of the cemetery. Merely partial cleaning of the most accessible part of the cemetery was conducted. Only such organization as Hesed can preserve the old Jewish cemetery as a historical monument for the next generations with the help of creation of museum complex in its territory. The aim of the complex is to preserve the cemetery and create open-air museum of local Jewish history. There are no such monumental Jewish complexes in Ukraine, so Khmelnitsky Welfare Fund "Hesed Besht" is pioneer in such activity.
The complex named "The Light of Soul" consists of Jewish cemetery, memorial monument dedicated to Jewish soldiers killed during the World War II, monument to Holocaust victims, museum of "matseva" (matseva is a stone stele on Jewish grave) and place for lighting up the memorial candles.
Financial help from not indifferent people such as Arkadiy Zemlyak, Grigoriy Golperin, Proskurov Fellowship Associations of Israel, Germany, USA, Canada allowed to arrange and clean the territory of complex. We had to cut down huge trees, thick bushes, got out numerous trucks with garbage. Only after this people got possibility to visit the graves of their relatives, look for them, light the fire of "yor-tsait". Topographical list of all burial places, created by the employees of the Fund, provide us with the possibility for quick and comfortable search of wanted graves.
But there are a lot of graves which will not be visited any more. Taking care of them is our duty to previous generations, to those, who continued and maintained the life of Jewish ethnos in this land.
Memorial monument will be dedicated to those, who fought against Fascist plague, will immortalize the names of our fathers and grandfathers, who were worthy of the glorious name "warriors of Jacob's house". Everyone can share the information about the Jewish soldiers and request a memorial name-plaque in honor of his relatives. According to the "Memorial book of Ukraine. Knmelnitsky Region." 2 696 Jewish soldiers originated from Kamyantes-Podolsky Province (today Khmelnitsky Province) were killed during World War II. The work on building the memorial was already started. Stormy years of 1941-1944 took 214 thousands lives of Jews from Kamyantes-Podolsky region and Jews departed from other countries of Europe. Females, children, teenagers and elderly persons were among them. Currently we are looking for funds to create a monument Jdedicated to their memory.
"Museum of matseva" will preserve wonderful examples of grave steles, beautiful ornamentations of which tell us about skilled workmen and admire us with its original beauty.
Creation of historical-museum complex "The Light of Soul" is an act of Mercy from all of us, the light of our souls and thoughts. Creation of such complex is a matter of honor for us and our holy duty. We appeal to everybody to join this noble matter.
