Names Remembered

The Cemetery Index Project aims to record
the names of 100,000 Jews buried in the Detroit area.

HARRY KIRS BAUM
Staff Writer

IV

Further checking showed syna-
gogue records of deaths in various
stages of completeness.
She took on the task of entering the
name, date of death and date of birth
or age at death of all Jews buried, and
maintaining the database into the
future.
"My thought was, 'that
couldn't be such a big job.' I
assumed there were only 10 or
so cemeteries." Now, she says,
she knows better. Oakland,
Macomb and Wayne counties
have 39 active and five closed
cemeteries.
The index's importance lies
in the desire for people to study
their roots, she said, and to shed
light on Jewish history in this
area.
The project stalled, but two

hile poring over records
from Detroit's
Woodmere Cemetery,
Allen Buch noticed
something odd — 47 burial entries on
November 23, 1884.
What could have possibly happened
on that date to cause so many burials, he
wondered. Was it a fire, an epidemic, or
some kind of horrible accident?
Nothing so dramatic, Buch found.
Temple Beth El had been leasing land
for a cemetery at Mack and Mt.
Elliott but the landowner sold it and
the 47 graves had to move. The worn
gravestones were impossible to read, so
the dates of the transfer to the Free
Sons of Israel Cemetery at Woodmere
became the date of death.
For the last six
years Buch has
been unravelling
mysteries like that
for a unique exer-
cise in community
history — the
Cemetery Index
Project. The pro-
ject aims to con-
struct a master
database to record
every burial in
Jewish cemeteries
in the Detroit area.
Tillie
Brandwine, chair
of the project said
as many as
100,000 Jewish
graves are in the
Allen Buch checks names at Woodmere Cemetery.
area. So far, 12
cemeteries are done
things happened in the past five years
and 26,000 names have been entered
to help her cause.
into the database.
In November, 1993, at a Jewish
The project began as an idea in
Federation of Metropolitan Detroit
1991, when Brandwine sought infor-
Board of Governors meeting,
mation from the library archives for
Brandwine read the weekly Torah por-
an out-of-town friend.
tion recounting how Abraham bought
She found many volumes of
a burial plot for his dead wife, Sarah,
Oakland County cemetery indexes,
to ensure the eternity of her memory.
but none of them were Jewish ceme-
Brandwine pointed out the signifi-
teries, she said.

8/7
1998

8 Detroit Jewish News

cance to her work. "During the many
centuries of the Diaspora, we have had
Lo abandon the graves of our ancestors
as we were forced to move," she said,
"only rarely leaving or keeping a
record."
The Federation took notice.
Two year later, Judge Avern Cohn

Beth Olam Cemetery

met Brandwine through
Sol Drachler at a mutu-
al friend's funeral, and
soon after, began the
Irwin I. Cohn fund to
help support the project
in memory of his
father.
With organizational
support from the
Federation and finan-
cial support from
Cohn, she began seek-
ing volunteers.
Twenty volunteers
now work with the
cooperation of the
Jewish Genealogical
Society of Michigan, the Jewish
Historical Society of Michigan and the
Federation's Jewish Community
Archives.
Buch, one of the unpaid assistants,
has made maps and taken information
from tombstones from at least eight
cemeteries. "He's the hardest working
volunteer we- have," Brandwine said.
"She's the heart and soul of the pro-

ject," countered Buch.
Susan Levitan, programmer of the
project for the past year, said the data-
base is very easy to use. Run much
like an Internet search engine, the
available information is entered so that
a user merely has to click "Search."
"The hardest part is the gather-
ing of names," she said.
While some, like Beth Olam
(Smith Street) Cemetery, have
listings on computer disk,
"many cemeteries- don't have
their act together computer-
wise. We have people
= inputting through long lists."
Brandwine agrees.
At Woodmere cemetery, "two
big, dusty books" need to be
copied, she said.
She has received informa-
tion from all over the state.
Many communities too small
to have their own Federation
have sent her data.
Kalamazoo and Alpena sent
records, and Brandwine received a
large loose-leaf notebook with pictures
of "every single headstone in a Benton
Harbor cemetery."
"It made me feel that we really have
something important here," she said.
Jews are also buried in non-sectari-
an cemeteries, but it would be too for-
midable to search every cemetery for
Jewish graves, said Brandwine. The
families of Jews buried in non-sectari-
an cemeteries can enter the names by
calling the Cemetery Index Project.
The project bring Brandwine con-
stant small surprises. She walked
through Franklin cemetery two years
ago, she recalled, and only recognized
one Jewish name. "Surprisingly, it had
little stones on it," she said. "
Someone still visits that grave."
"I'm happy to help people find
graves of relatives, but what's most
important is the index itself,"
Brandwine said, "that our names will
not be obliterated."

❑

To volunteer, or provide informa-
tion, call the Jewish Community

Archives: (248) 642-4260.

