Residents of a Belarus town on the border with Poland made the macabre discovery that thousands of Jewish gravestones have been used to construct buildings, roads – and even garden paving.

The headstones have been turning up in locations all over Brest over the past six years, with around 1,500 discovered so far.

Hundreds were discovered in May during the construction of a supermarket, with headstones unearthed by diggers.

Residents of a Belarus town on the border with Poland made the macabre discovery of thousands of Jewish gravestones that have been used to construct buildings, roads, even garden paving

Hundreds of headstones were discovered in May during the construction of a supermarket, when they were by unearthed by diggers

Debra Brunner, co-director of The Together Plan, a UK-based charity that promotes the development of skills and education in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, has been helping with efforts to have the headstones protected and turned into a memorial.

She has visited the supermarket site herself and described the experience as ‘bizarre’.

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

The headstones have been turning up in locations all over Brest for the past six years, with around 1,500 discovered so far

The headstones were part of a huge Jewish cemetery that dated back to around 1832

Ms Brunner said that the story behind the headstones is a heartbreaking one – but hopes that awareness of it will help bring the Jewish community empowerment and closure.

She said that the headstones were part of a huge Jewish cemetery that dated back to around 1832 – but a definite date is hard to pin-point because records were destroyed in the Holocaust.

‘Every Jew in Brest – bar 19 – was killed by the Nazis,’ she said. ‘That’s 30,000 Jews killed. The whole community was annihilated.’

The gravestones proved to be very useful building materials for the townsfolk – but most had no idea what they were

Residents began taking the headstones to a local priest - who told them they were religious artifacts and should be protected

Things didn’t improve much in the post-war Soviet era. ‘The Jews weren’t allowed to practice their religion,’ Ms Brunner said. ‘The Soviets desecrated the whole cemetery and removed every single gravestone.’

These gravestones proved to be very useful building materials for the townsfolk. People used them as foundations in their houses, as grindstones and they bolstered roads – but most had no idea what they were.

However, in recent years, some with suspicions that they were using religious artifacts took them to a local priest for his opinion.

He knew immediately that he was looking at sacred objects and urged residents to save them.

Ms Brunner said: ‘More and more people recognised them – and soon there was a tidal wave of headstones.’

At the moment the headstones are piled up in the arches of the Brest Fortress, but The Together Plan is hoping to attract the support of the U.S Commission For Jewish Heritage Abroad, so that funding can be raised to build a memorial using the headstones at the site of the original cemetery, which lies on scrubland next to a running track.