The tiny Polish town of Pilica hides an infuriating secret: Homeowners who lived in the town after World War II used Jewish gravestones to build an outhouse and parts of their home, apparently in an effort to defile the memory of the Jews.
The sight of dozens of gravestones bearing Hebrew writing as part of a structure that serves as an outhouse is unsettling. The home, which has been abandoned in recent years after its owners passed away, is littered with broken gravestones, an open wound in the heart of the polish village.
Jonny Daniels, the head of the From the Depths organization that honors the memory of Holocaust victims, was summoned to the house by one of the group's volunteers in the area. He was appalled by what he found.
"I felt rage and sadness at the same time when I saw the egregious disrespect that our brothers' and sisters' gravestones had been shown," Daniels recalled. "The only thing we leave behind in this world is our good name and our burial place. The moment that is taken from us, and used to build a house or worse, an outhouse, it is deeply insulting. It wasn't enough that the Nazis tried to kill the Jews who were alive, the Poles later tried to destroy all traces that the Jews had lived." more
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