Sambir

Sambir

In Sambir, I found a large synagogue modified for use as a store and a cemetery where goats and chickens roamed; children rode bikes and played; people cut through using well-worn, apparently original cemetery paths; crosses had been erected nearby; and a man busied himself digging a hole.

As I was photographing a tall cross at one end of the cemetery — just outside the cemetery but very near the recently vandalized Jewish memorial — I was approached by an older man. My guide appeared to translate. The man was talkative and offered a number of observations. He noted that the cross I had photographed, despite no such tangible indications, had been erected in honor of Italians who fell near Sambir while serving with their German allies, and that one should not think badly of Ukrainians because of the desecration of the Jewish Shoah memorial site because that was perhaps a result of the insufficiently religious and of the Satan-worshippers who were vandalizing all cemeteries. Through my guide I asked the man if I could photograph him as an example of a “good man” but he declined because he said that he was a monk. Why a monk could not have his photo made was not explained.

Note the small white cross visible in the distance in the photo of the Shoah memorial. It stands just outside the boundaries of the Jewish cemetery, and, like the large wooden cross in the photo, seems to serve no discernible religious purpose.