After a particularly inspiring visit to Poland in 2007, I decided that I would build a fence. I wanted to donate the funds to enclose the Jewish cemetery in a specific Polish town to which I felt a connection; however, I had no idea how to initiate the process. In the summer of 2008, when I happened to be in Washington D.C. on vacation, I stopped in at the office of a particular federal agency to see if they could help. One of the staff members was gracious enough to meet with me with no prior notice and spent some time with me. The agency representative asked me several times why I traveled to eastern...

Many times when we arrive in a town or village, we do not know where to look to find a cemetery or a Jewish site, so we have to ask the local people. They are invariably polite and quite willing to stop what they are doing to talk to us. Normally we try to speak with elderly people who would be the most likely to have first hand knowledge of former Jewish sites. Over the years I have heard some common themes expressed. For example, if a person is old enough to remember the time prior to 1939, she will frequently say to us that she played with Jewish children, that she had Jewish friends, and that...

When we travel to eastern Europe we take with us a quantity of small blue glass beads such as might be used by a florist or a decorator. I refer to them as blue stones. When we visit cemeteries, we place a few of these stones on tombstones as a sign that someone has visited. Of course we could simply pick up a rock from the cemetery for this purpose, but I prefer the blue stones because they make it quite clear that someone has made a particular effort to place his feet upon the ground in what is sometimes a very desolate cemetery in a remote location. I am certain that relatively few of these...