Timesunion.com

COLONIE —A group of Siena College students made their second summer trip to restore a Jewish cemetery destroyed by the Nazis during World War II and neglected by generations of villagers in Rubezhevichi, Belarus.

"This project literally altered the course of my college career," said Leah Antil of Palmer, Mass., a senior psychology major who reprised a similar trip she made to Vselyub, Belarus, in 2006. Antil dropped her science major, learned Russian and studied abroad last year in St. Petersburg, Russia.

On this summer’s trip, she and 15 other students spent five nights living with host families. Antil was able to converse in Russian.

The students, who raised their own money for the trip, cleared weeds and underbrush, restored 550 overturned gravestones and erected a new fence.

During their two-week trip, the students visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. They were also guests at an embassy luncheon hosted by the U.S. ambassador to Belarus.

They were taken to the area in Rubezhevichi where the village’s Jewish residents had been rounded up by the Nazis six decades earlier, shot to death and tossed in a mass grave the villagers had been forced to dig themselves.

"This was a unique educational experience for the students and the interfaith connection was very important," said Dr. Michael Lozman, a Latham orthodontist and member of Congregation Ohav Shalom in Albany. He has completed seven Jewish cemetery restorations in the former Soviet satellite. He began the work in 2002 after visiting his father’s hometown of Sopotskin in Belarus and seeing the forlorn condition of its cemetery. Both his parents, who are dead, immigrated to the U.S. before World War II.

"The Siena students were tremendous goodwill ambassadors for the United States," Lozman said.

"Making this trip a second time allowed us to take this experience to the next level for our students. They achieved a much deeper understanding of the culture and community in Belarus," said social work professor Diana Strock-Lynskey. Plans are under way for a third trip, while Lozman applies for grants to increase the number of cemetery restorations and student involvement.

Antil made lasting friendships with children at a school in Vselyub during her 2006 trip and visited them again this summer. She’s spearheading a drive to send hundreds of donated books and school supplies to the impoverished students later this month.