Inhabitants of the city of Brest, in the former Soviet Republic of Belarus, are grappling with the unsettling discovery that several of the city's buildings, roads, and pavement stones were constructed using grave-markers ripped out of Jewish cemeteries, a common Holocaust practice employed by Nazi Germans who occupied the territory from 1941 to 1944.

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Not known was where the stones were used. Approximately 1,500 individual cases of tombstones found to have been used in Nazi-era construction have been documented in Brest over the last six years. However, hundreds more turned up in May of this year when a parcel of land was being leveled for a supermarket. 

Work crews ceased construction after they recognized the shattered remnants for what they were and contacted local authorities.

Then part of the USSR, Belarus was a major transit corridor for Nazi armies moving east and Soviet troops pushing back to the west during World War II. Amid the fighting, Brest and most of the cities of Belarus were bombed relentlessly. Amid the hasty reconstruction, the Nazi legacy of using Jewish headstones for building material was literally covered over by new buildings. 

Debra Brunner, co-director of The Together Plan, a U.K.-based organization promotes the development of skills and education in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, was called to the scene.

"I've never seen anything like it," Brunner told MailOnline.com. "It was bizarre. They were everywhere. The builders were very kind, though, and concerned and wanted to know what they should do with them." 

Brunner told reporters she plans to assist with efforts to have the headstones protected and turned into a memorial. The oldest of the stones date back to 1832, but it is not known when or from what cemetery or cemeteries the stones were harvested. 

The Holocaust completely wiped out the Jewish population of Belarus, with more than 30,000 Jews murdered. Under Soviet policies, the Jewish sites that did survive the war were desecrated and destroyed, leading destitute townspeople to use the cast-aside headstones as building material.

TagsBrest, Nazi, holocaust, gravestones, headstones, Jews, Jewish cemetaries, grave desecration