Jewish life in Belarus

Workers rebuilding a sports stadium on the site of an 18th century Jewish cemetery in Belarus say they have no choice but to consign the bones to city dumps. “It’s impossible to pack an entire cemetery into sacks,” said worker Mikhail Gubets, adding that he stopped counting the skulls when the number went over 100. But critics say it’s part of a pattern of callous indifference toward Belarus’ Jewish heritage that was prevalent when the country was a Soviet republic and hasn’t changed. The stadium in Gomel, Belarus’ second largest city and a center of Jewish life until World War