A group of Orthodox Jewish leaders from New York has called on Spain to stop what they said is the excavation of an ancient Jewish burial site in Toledo, in central Spain.

Rabbi David Niederman, president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and one of those leading the campaign, said that the cemetery lay beneath, and adjacent to, a school built in Toledo in the 1970s. Builders, who unearthed Jewish graves during the school’s original construction, were now excavating new ones in order to extend the school, he said.

Rabbi Niederman said the disinterment of graves, which is largely forbidden in Judaism, added a fresh violation to a painful history for Jews in Spain.