The photo report about the Deliatyn’s old Jewish cemetery by Taras Zolotavin at the Wiki Loves Monuments contest has been recognized as the best series
In 1943, the Nazis declared Deliatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region, a town “free of Jews”. During the occupation they carried out five punitive actions there, executing about 3,000 people.
It was a classic Galician shtetl in the 19th century, if we look at the old Jewish cemetery (kirkut). The oldest date on one of the matsevot (Jewish gravestones) is 1893, the last date is 1940.
The cemetery is not protected by the state, but its preservation was taken care of by the activists of the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF) — they removed garbage and put a fence around it.
There are about 500 surviving matsevot. There could have been more if the headstones had not been used for road construction during the Soviet regime.
Until recently, there have been only three photos of this cemetery in Wikipedia. There are more than a hundred photos there now.
The photo report from Deliatyn by Taras Zolotavin at the Wiki Loves Monuments contest has been recognized as the best series for careful documentation and high artistry of the photos.
Taras is a soldier in the Armed Forces of Ukraine now. He debuted in the Wikipedia contest in 2021 and was immediately nominated in the category “For the largest number of landmarks photographed by new participants”. He submitted 161 photos of 104 cultural monuments of Ukraine to the contest then. Many of them appeared in Wikipedia for the first time thanks to Taras.
