PRESERVING HERITAGE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

At the recently formed United Synagogue Heritage Department, we welcome the debate about the future viability of Jewish museums. We are ourselves grappling with these issues as we seek to protect and conserve some of the great remaining sites of British Jewish history.

The debate focuses on whether museums are in the best place. There’s no question of our moving Willesden Cemetery. The US has recently been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to develop conservation plans for Willesden and we will be encouraging people to come and visit.

Willesden Cemetery represents 150 years of Jewish life in Britain. The place and its landscape, once meadow, latterly industrial, are integral to understanding a part of the British Jewish story that cannot be forgotten.

As we balance the need to preserve a place for future generations, all heritage practitioners face the same challenge: to connect places with people. We all need to be confident of the reasons people visit, and come back, to these special places.

Surely visiting depends on the interpretations that skilful tour and exhibition design can offer and that visitors themselves can contribute to as a living part of their own and others’ heritage.

Stories will be our core material. Chief Rabbis, businessmen, philanthropists, adventurers, scientists, artists and writers are buried at Willesden, along with many of your readers’ relatives. People will be at the heart of every activity we plan, as volunteers and visitors. I urge anyone who would like to get involved to get in touch with us to help us shape its future. Hester Abrams Project Manager, Willesden Cemetery heritage@theus.org.uk