The Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland vowed to protect Jewish burial grounds in Central and Eastern Europe, during a visit to Frampol, a small town in southeastern Poland where the residents helped protect a local Jewish cemetery.

"The erosion of Jewish heritage on European soil is a problem. And not just for historians or descendants of the deceased, but for all those who value open and inclusive societies, he said.

He added: "Every year at Holocaust memorials, we say 'never forget’, and that means we must keep the memory alive in our local communities, too."

After a talk with pupils of Frampol's school, who have helped in the protection of the local Jewish cemetery, the entire congregation walked to the Jewish cemetery of the small town, where a commemoration took place.

Frampol is a town in Lublin province. Prior to World War II, it had a large Jewish population. In September 1939, the German Luftwaffe destroyed almost the entire town in an air raid. Around a thousand local Jews were shot by the Nazi occupiers and buried in a mass grave at the cemetery site.

After the war, the stone wall surrounding the cemetery was dismantled by locals and some of the tombstones were plundered.

Last year, a fence was erected around the site. Financed by Germany, the project was carried out by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, which is the Polish partner of the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative which works to protect Jewish burial grounds in Central and Eastern Europe.

‘’We are in a race against time to protect the last physical vestiges of Jewish presence in the thousands of towns and villages of Central and Eastern Europe wiped out by the Nazis. Our role is to physically protect these sites, and we must act now as memory becomes history and it will soon be too late," said the organisation’s executive officer, Philip Carmel