Scholar Maurice Herszaft of the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe made his first visit within the framework of the Protecting Memory in September 2011. In a quiet moment, he reflected on the 48 Jews and two Ukrainians, presumably Orthodox Christians, buried at a mass grave in the center of Kysylyn.
In September 2011, Serhii Shvardovsky of the Volhynian Religious Community of Reform Judaism and Maurice Herszaft filled in an open mass grave with sand to prevent further damage from erosion and plunder.
A witness tells what she saw as a child in Ostrozhets in October 1942, when approximately 800 Jews from Ostrozhets and Torhovytsia were shot. Within the framework of Protecting Memory, historian Mikhail Tyaglyy of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies conducted numerous interviews with locals. In many cases, this was the first testimony given by these witnesses – after more than 70 years.
Joe Shik of the Committee for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe made his first visit to the former killing site and mass grave in Prokhid in July 2011. The scholar supervised construction work on the memorial at this former sand quarry, where the Jewish community of Ratne was shot and hastily buried.
In in the 1960s, survivors and members of the Israeli organization Israeli Organization of the Jews of Kovel and its Surroundings created a small hill in the center of the mass grave site in Bakhiv. Thirty years later, they put up a memorial stone with a Hebrew inscription, which replaced a Ukrainian- and Yiddish-language plaque.
A trip was made to the sites suggested by Yahad-In Unum for the project Protecting Memory. The participants were from AJC, the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, Yahad-In Unum, as well as the German War Graves Commission and the Volhynian Religious Community of Reform Judaism.