Those kinds of people used to live in our town. I was walking along the graves and when I saw unknown ones. I suddenly remembered that in Israel there are no graves of unknown soldiers… A married couple, who came from Germany, was standing near one grave. When I saw them I remembered that thousands of people came from Australia, America, Canada, and Israel to that place. I was thinking about how in the past, a big Sumska’ Jewish community of Konotop became smaller and smaller. A lot of people moved all over the world, but graves were still here...

I walked along the whole Jewish cemetery. The monuments with notes in Jewish ended. And the monuments with stars and crosses began... All those monuments reminded us of who lived in our native Konotop, worked here, fell in love, joyful, created and dreamed, disappointed, and hoped for a better life, and believed... Let God be with them! We must remember them because while we remember, we are living... From “Lebn” to “Ester” The 23rd of October 1993 is a special day in the history of the Jewish community in Konotop. That day in the house number 47 on Volochaevska Street, apartment 3, the family of Sofia Abramovna Raibenbakh the people gathered for whom the destiny of Konotop's Jews was not indifferent. Those people still remembered that time when everyone could hear Jewish language, the Jewish holidays were celebrated, religious people could pray, matzos were prepared on Pasakh, and Jews knew very well what was a mitzvah, tzadeka, and tallis. On that day seventy people gathered for the purpose of uniting the community in order to help each other in difficult times, to study their ancient history, and languages, Hebrew and Yiddish, to revive our great culture and spirituality.

34 Denikin was a general of Tzar’s army, who used to fight Communists during the civil

war in the 1920’s. At the same time he created pogroms and killed Jews.