After the Second World War, many European municipalities allowed all traces of their cities' Jewish past to fade into obscurity, with not even a memorial to commemorate the vanished communities.
The Communist authorities in Brest, Belarus, however, went one step further: they used Jewish gravestones as building materials to reconstruct the city.
The tombstones have recently been found embedded in roads, pavements and gardens - and when houses were demolished to make way for a supermarket this year, developers found 450 had been used in the foundations.
As well as being close to the Jewish cemetery, the site of the new supermarket was the location of the Warburg Colony, a refuge for Jewish orphans whose parents died in the First World War. Some of the wooden houses that survived the war have been destroyed by the developers.
The orphans, and almost all of the city's other Jewish residents, were massacred between 1941 and 1942.
After the war, the Communists set about eradicating the last vestiges of Jewish culture by turning the cemetery into a sports stadium.
Debra Brunner, co-director of Together Plan, a UK-based charity supporting impoverished communities in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, said: "So many Jewish buildings were destroyed and in many places there is just a whisper of the huge Jewish population that was once there." In an interview with Vice, she said: "I can't even begin to explain what it felt like to actually stand among the graves. Picture a huge mound of freshly dug mud with Jewish headstones coming out at all angles. It was a macabre sight."
Around 1,500 headstones have been found in Brest over the past six years. Many have been piled up next to the 19th century Brest-Litovsk Fortress.
However, Ms Brunner is working with Regina Simonenko, head of the Holocaust Centre in Brest, to construct a protective fence to secure the graves by the fortress and, in the longer term, to create a memorial using the stones.
Together Plan, in partnership with Radlett Reform Synagogue, has already paid for 400 headstones to be moved from the site where the supermarket foundations were being dug. But until more money is raised, the fate of the stones remains unclear.
Ms Brunner said: "The diaspora must rally and support the restoration of this history and in so doing help the existing community to grow."
Together Plan held a fundraising event at the Phoenix Cinema, Finchley, this Monday, at which two films on the Brest headstones discovery were shown, followed by a discussion.
Ms Brunner has also been asked by a group of Knesset members to travel to Israel to discuss the issue.
