There are mass execution spots. The forces of economic growth clash with the forces of historical preservation and the Talmud. The problem of neglected, abandoned, and obliterated graveyards exists throughout Europe, according to Gruber, who surveys cemeteries for the American commission. Cemeteries have fallen into disuse because of the Holocaust, which left areas depopulated, communities destroyed and led to emigration. All cemeteries have what experts call some kind of encroachment problem, in which the site has been violated by inappropriate development, such as buildings, playgrounds, parks and even agriculture.
Vegetation is rampant, as is vandalism.
It has dispatched its commissioners, with the support of the US State Department, to meet with European prime ministers and cultural officials to win commitments to save heritage sites. Any official European governmental commitment to protect graveyards is only one of numerous factors that must be orchestrated to preserve Jewish cemeteries in Europe. There must be a legal obligation to protect the sites, the political will to compel compliance, financing for the sites and those displaced by the discovery of graveyards, and cooperative relations between local Jewish communities and Jews abroad. As recent cases in Prague, Ukraine and Slovakia show, this is a complicated and unlikely prospect. The predicament of the Ukrainian Jewish cemetery in Lvov dramatically illustrates that, without cash, cooperation among the parties won't save a graveyard.