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American Heritage Abroad
Commissioner Rotter helps restore Lithuania's largest Jewish cemetery.
Dorie Shwedel
Special to the Jewish News
H
arriet B. Rotter, a Franklin family
law attorney, was appointed by
President George W. Bush to the
U.S. Commission for the Preservation of
America's Heritage Abroad in 2003. Rotter
had no idea what she was getting into.
Founded in 1985 at the behest of
Holocaust survivors and children of sur-
vivors, the commission was planned to
encourage the preservation and protection
of cemeteries, monuments, sacred places
and historic buildings in Eastern and
Central Europe associated with the foreign
heritage of U.S. citizens.
The 21 members of the commission were
asked to visit these sites and evaluate the
damage done through neglect, purposeful
disfigurement and theft.
Although Rotter had doubts as to the
importance of restoring synagogues and
cemeteries in countries that made it their
business to desecrate and destroy them, she
asked to be assigned to Lithuania, where
her family originated.
Her doubts as to the purposefulness of
restoring the cemetery disappeared dur-
ing the trip she and her husband, Norman
Rotter, began in Vilnius on Sept. 5, 2003.
It was a journey that took her into her
family's ancestral home in Darbenai — a
journey chronicled in the Detroit Jewish
News in December of that year.
Rotter's project was to restore the Uzupis
Jewish Cemetery. Dating back to the 16th
century, it was the largest Jewish cemetery
in the country. More than 70,000 people
were buried there between 1830 and 1948.
During the Communist era, most of the
headstones were taken from the burial site
and used as steps for government buildings
and as paving stones on some of the city's
streets.
"It was heart-wrenching to see the mess
that was left," Rotter said. "The cemetery
had become an unkempt, overgrown field
with brush, and the remaining headstones
were piled up atop one another in a heap
miles from the cemetery. What I realized
was that restoring it was doable.
"The government of Lithuania under-
stood it was necessary to recognize and
reconcile the past to have a future, and
there was a willingness to contribute half
A16
July 23 a 2009
of the money [$75,000] to create a monu-
ment that would serve as a reminder of the
importance of the role that Jewish citizens
have played in the history of Vilnius, once
called the 'Jerusalem of the north:"
The other half of the funds were raised
from private American donors, including
many Metro Detroiters, such as Alan and
Sharyl Ackerman of Bloomfield Hills and
Aviva and Dean Friedman of Franklin, who
read about the restoration in the original
JN article.
Through the efforts of Rotter and the
commission, the project was recently com-
pleted. The headstones, which could not be
restored or possibly placed within the cem-
etery, are artfully and honorably arranged
into a memorial wall.
Personal Connections
"My father was born in Poland and my
mother in Lithuania so I am a first-gen-
eration American," Rotter explains. "I am
not that far removed from my roots. Being
entrusted to actually participate in the sav-
ing of these historic sites is an honor and a
privilege."
She says her Lithuanian mother was not
excited about her going to Lithuania. "She
told me not to spend one dollar there," she
said. "It's amazing. My mother was born
there, her family fled and one generation
later her daughter is being driven in an
American Embassy car on same
cobblestsone streets.
"I felt a kinship there,' she said.
"Everyone looks like my uncle. And they tell
us, `Thanks you so much for not forgetting
us. But we can't let the world forget who
lived there:'
Rotter's appointment, and subsequent
re-appointment through 2010, followed her
service on numerous boards and commis-
sions, including the board of trustees at
Central Michigan University, the American
Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, the
International Academy of Matrimonial
Lawyers and the President's Advisory
Committee on the Arts (PACA) of the John
F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
She is listed in the Best Lawyers in America
and in Michigan Super Lawyers.
Her current project with the Commission
takes her to Russia, where she has met
with the chief rabbis of Moscow and St.
Petersburg and other Jewish leaders to plan
for a memorial to be built by the Bryansk
A memorial in several languages stands
before a wall made of gravestones at
Uzupis, the largest Jewish cemetery
in Lithuania.
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Harriet Rotter
Jewish community. The project is part of
the Russian Jewish Congress' Babi Yars of
Russian Memorial Program.
The memorial commemorates at least
500 Jewish men, women and children shot
during a mass execution March 2, 1942, in
Bryansk.
"I have witnessed a genuine desire on
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the part of the governments in Eastern
and Central Europe to restore sites ruined
in WWII and during subsequent regimes,
and all that has significant meaning to
American citizens whose roots are in
Europe." E