Located at 53°27' N 23°53' E in Grodno uezd, Grodno guberniya-Grodno Oblast, 153.8 miles W of Minsk and approximately 26 km from the outskirts of Grodno. Alternate name: Amdur. Amdur Shtetlink and yizkor and a trip to Amdur. 1897 population was 2,194 people, 82% of them Jewish. [March 2009]
After passing through the industrial outskirts of Grodno on a road with much automobile traffic, one is in the countryside. Fields are slightly rolling, with some birch trees and pine trees. The town of Indura seems much less changed, from the description in Yedidya Efron's book Amdur Mein Geboirn Shetl, written of the town from what it was in the 1890's than one might expect. The synagogue is a large red-brick building with two stories and roof-dormer rooms. Source: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; [February 2001]
Although there are many stones in the cemetery, most have been lost --presumably taken away-- because one no longer sees rows of stones, even where there are rows of mounded graves. The cemetery is unfenced. The synagogue is visible from most points on it. I saw practically no obvious desecration, with one exception. There is just one raised 'kevre' (if that's the right term [ohel?]) in the cemetery. That ohel had apparently been forced or blasted open, a piece lies at too much distance from it to have simply fallen. There is some litter now in the ohel, though that may bespeak only slovenliness, not intentional desecration. But there is a skeleton of a dead dog and a few broken bottles alongside it that may bespeak more than negligence. I failed to try to tidy things up; maybe someone else will. I took about 35 photos of tombstones in the INDURA cemetery. A set of those photos, positives and negatives, and also scanned pictures are on file with the Jewish Community Center of Warsaw. Source: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [February 2001]
In 1946, local peasants pastured their cows among the gravestones "as if it were just another field, as if there had never been any Jews." In "1948, 'there was a violent thunderstorm, the most ferocious that anyone could remember. Twelve cows were struck dead by lightning, right over there,' he recalls, pointing to a ridge near the center of the cemetery. "But no other cow was struck in all of Amdur, ..."The peasants took the death of the 12 cows as a sign from God. The communists were in power, of course, but the peasants never believed in any of that." Source [March 2009]
photos of the 18th century cemetery, destroyed. [February 2010]
Cemetery restoration information. [December 2010]