KC couple visit restored relative’s grave in Poland

After working to restore a series of family graves there over the past decade, Floriene and George Lieberman visited the grave sites this summer during a trip to Warsaw.

It all started a decade ago when George and Floriene’s son, Craig Lieberman, made a side trip to Warsaw’s main Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery during a tour of Europe with the Young Presidents Organization.

Having done some research before he went, and with the help of a caretaker, Craig Lieberman found some graves he believed to be those of members of his mother’s family — the Nelkinbaums and Spiewaks. However, the graves were in bad shape, like most of the 200,000-plus burial plots in the sprawling cemetery.

And so, at Craig’s urging, the Liebermans and their Nelkin cousins began to collect money and send it to the skeleton crew of caretakers at the cemetery, asking them to devote special attention to maintaining their family members’ graves.

The Americans and the Poles exchanged before-and-after photos and money over the past 10 years, which resulted in the restoration of about a half-dozen grave sites, the Liebermans said.

And so, when George and Floriene Lieberman went on a European vacation in July, they decided to visit to the cemetery, too, to see the graves of Floriene’s relatives.

“It took 45 minutes of walking to find the first grave,” George Lieberman said. “There are no pathways. It’s all overgrown. It’s like being in a forest. Half the stones are turned over.”

One grave was all the Liebermans had time to visit during their day in Warsaw. The next closest grave site was three-fourths of a mile away from the first, George Lieberman said.
Floriene Lieberman said that, while standing in the cemetery at what she believed to be the burial site of a great-uncle, she thought it had been was worth all the time, effort and money.

“It was a very emotional experience for me,” she said. “We went by where my mother was born, and the cemetery is not far from there.”

The caretakers, she said, were extremely helpful as guides. One of them found her a stone, which she placed atop her relative’s grave marker as the traditional sign of a visiting loved one.

“I said Kaddish, and just had this feeling of my ancestors all being around me,” Floriene Lieberman said.

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