JEWISH CEMETERIES IN POLAND
Cemeteries dot the landscape of Poland, though ravaged by war, vandals, scavengers, and time.
For Jews the care of cemeteries is an essential religious and social responsibility. The Talmudic saying, "the Jewish gravestones are fairer than royal palaces" (Sanh. 96b; cf Matt. 23:29) reflects the care that is expected to be given to Jewish graves and cemeteries. In normal circumstances, the protection and repair of cemeteries is willingly shared by the Jewish community.
Before the Holocaust, Jewish cemeteries belonged to individual Jewish communities. Even at the height of Jewish emigration to America, family members and landsmanshaftn stayed behind to insure care for the graves of the dead. Jewish religious law stipulates that cemeteries be carefully delimited, and walls and fences were erected to prevent the desecration of cemetery grounds and the defilement of the religious Jews, who could only come in contact with the dead under certain conditions. The Holocaust destroyed all normal circumstances.
In 1939, official Polish sources listed 1,415 Jewish communities with populations of more than a hundred Jews within the pre-war territory of Poland. Most if not all of these had one or more cemeteries. A large number were destroyed by the Germans, but traces of many survive. In 1979 the Warsaw-based Office for Religious Denominations (part of the Office of the Council of Ministers) compiled a list of 434 Jewish cemeteries in Poland. Of these, it was stated that only 22 were in relatively good condition, that 68 had been more than 50% destroyed during the war, 136 had been more than 90% destroyed, that 136 revealed only traces of the original burial grounds and 129 cemeteries were practically non-existent.
The World Monuments Fund survey for the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad has surveyed 1008 Jewish cemetery sites within the present-day borders of Poland. Without doubt there are more. This total includes large cemeteries with tens of thousands of craves (Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz, and Wroclaw, for example), hundreds of smaller cemeteries with a few score to a thousand gravestones, and the majority of sites with no visible gravestones. About 400 cemeteries have gravestones, but only 140 have a significant number - that is, more than 100 monuments. Significantly, a large number of cemeteries have been built over for new purposes. Offices, schools, stadiums, bus stations, or warehouses have been built upon 130 cemeteries.
Hundreds of cemeteries, especially small burial plots, were either deliberately liquidated - bulldozed or built over - during World War 11 and the years since, and memory of their locations vanished with the communities that used to look after them.
a. Types of Jewish Cemeteries
The appearance of Jewish cemeteries in various parts of prewar Poland differed, depending on local tradition and circumstance. The customs of each region reflect the laws and traditions of Austria, Prussia and Russia, which from 1795 to 1918 divided and occupied Poland. Gravestones dating from before 1800 have been found at only about 60 cemeteries.
The majority of Jewish cemeteries, located in and near small towns, were surrounded by rough wooden fences or an earthen bank. Graves could usually be placed where people wanted, though separation of men, women and children was maintained. Graves were marked by matzevot, either of stone or wood. These could take many forms. Some were rough boulder-like stones, smoothed on only one face, with a simple inscription. Other gravestones were finely carved with elaborate symbolic representations, usually referring to the name, occupation or reputation of the deceased. These carved gravestones were often tall and narrow, with rounded tops. Long inscriptions filled most of the stone, and decorative reliefs were placed in the semi-circular top. Most inscriptions, which face east, were in Hebrew, and in the twentieth century sometimes in Yiddish, Polish, or German. Local stone were usually used for matzevot, and these were often not durable and crumbled quickly. Both gravestones and wooden markers were often painted in many colors.
In many Jewish cemeteries, eminent members of the community, especially esteemed rabbis and scholars, were given more prominent gravestones. This often took the form of an ohel (tent, in Hebrew), or covered enclosure, to protect the grave. The erection of ohels was particularly prevalent in Hasidic communities where revered tzaddikim were buried. These Braves were, and often continue to be, the focus of annual pilgrimages by devout Jews.
In big towns and cities there was more variety in the way cemeteries were arranged and in the types of -gravestones. Cities had larger and more diverse Jewish communities, including assimilated and Reform communities.
Large urban cemeteries such as those in Warsaw, Lodz, Bialystok, and Krakow have Generally fared better than secluded cemeteries in rural areas. The size alone of some of the urban cemeteries (some of which have several hundred thousand -raves) prevented total destruction. Though subject to regular vandalism and abuse, these sites are still impressive for the number of gravestones and tomb monuments which survive.
Urban Jewish communities were more susceptible to Christian influence in art and architecture, and a number of the gravestones and mausoleum from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the cemeteries in Warsaw, Lodz, Bialystok, and Krakow reflect contemporary artistic trends rather than traditional Jewish folk motifs. Urban cemeteries tended to include more lavish tombs, since in every urban community there were families and individuals of substantial wealth and power whose prestige is manifest in the cemetery designs they chose.
This was particularly true in Prussia, where Jews in the nineteenth century tried, just as their Protestant and Catholic neighbors did, to give their cemeteries an appropriately dignified appearance. At each cemetery, this called for a solid enclosure, a large mortuary and well marked sections with regular lanes planted with decorative trees and bushes. Gravestones were made of lasting materials including marble or granite. Their style was often very different from traditional matzevot, and mirrored secular tastes and styles. Because so many German Jews were influenced by the Jewish Reform movement, inscriptions were often in German as well as Hebrew. German inscriptions were often placed on the reverse side of the Hebrew inscription.
b. Care and Restoration of Jewish Cemeteries
After World War 11, cemeteries that had been maintained by close-knit communities for generations were left to deteriorate. Already overturned and broken gravestones were left to suffer from the weather, to sink further into sand, and to be covered by vegetation. Immediately after the war returning survivors often erected memorials out of broken gravestones, such as at Lodz, Lukow, Myslenice, Siedlce, and Sandomierz. In the words of historian James Young, "by turning to the only materials available - broken bits of matzevot and mortar - survivors and community volunteers in Krakow and Warsaw did not restore the sites of remembrance so much as they created new ones, formalizing their destruction."
In a few instances, local officials helped in this process, as at Oswiecim (Auschwitz) where, according to Rabbi Asher Scharf, gravestones that had been vandalized and removed, including many which had been used for paving(y stones, were gathered together and used to "make a sort of fence so that there should be no entrance by the horse and cattle onto the Cemetery. The ohel of my great-great-grandfather was destroyed, but the iron fence around the grave was still intact." It was only years later, when Pope John Paul II visited Oswiecim that the perimeter wall of gravestones was dismantled and a new fence and gate was constructed. Generally, abandoned cemeteries, like so much property in Poland, became state property, though the circumstances of this transfer remain unclear. With few Jews left, and Jewish communities abroad pressed by other worries, few individuals expressed concern. The Jewish past was not considered important by Communist officials. In some places "anti-Semitism without Jews" became the implicit policy, so that even talk of protecting Jewish sites was politically suspect.
Today, a relatively small number of Jewish cemeteries in Poland arc formally in the care of the Union of Jewish Communities (Zwiazek Gmin Zydowskich), but the small Polish Jewish Community has neither the manpower nor the funds to survey the cemeteries, let alone to preserve them. In 1974 the Religious Union of Mosaic Faith (the predecessor of the Union of Jewish Communities) owned 70 cemeteries, and by 1981 it owned only 47. Those that they own are not necessarily in good condition.
The long-standing neglect of cemeteries, as well as the disregard manifested by the dumping of garbage, the removal of sand, and the building of houses, all of which caused profanation of mortal remains, Generated protests by Jews living, abroad as information became more readily available. Protests helped stop overt desecration but have not yet led to significant protection and maintenance of cemeteries.
In the 1970s a social movement developed, mostly among the intelligentsia, which aimed to save Jewish monuments. Out of this growing, interest and the more liberal climate which accompanied the (,growth of the Solidarity movement, the Citizens' Committee for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries and Cultural Monuments in Poland, whose members are both Jews and Christians, was founded in 1981. The Citizens' Committee cooperates with the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Religious Union of the Mosaic Faith. Members of the Citizens' Committee have carried out much of the survey work for the World Monuments Fund project.
In an important pronouncement in 1976, Poland's Department of Religion responded to the concerns of the Rabbinical Committee for Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries by informing the regional conservation offices in Poland that, according,, to the laws of the Jewish religion, the around of Jewish cemeteries remains sacred land forever, and cannot serve another purpose.
A change in a law of January 31, 1959 concerning cemeteries and burying the dead was passed on June 14, 1991, and added the following regulations to paragraph 6, section b:
2. If the cemetery area is or was previously the property of the Catholic Church or any other church or denominational association, the decision on use of the cemetery area for any other purpose [other than as a cemetery] requires the agreement of the appropriate authority of this church or denominational association.
3. The decision on the use of a cemetery area which was previously the denominational cemetery of the Catholic Church or any other church or denominational association, for any other purpose, is declared after consulting opinion of the appropriate authority of this church or denominational association concerning the marking and commemorating of the former cemetery area...
The following was added to section d:
In cases justified by particular public reasons the authority with jurisdiction over the cemetery location may apply to the Minister of the Land Development and Construction for release from the requirement of obtaining the agreement mentioned in point 2 [above].
While the first changes in the law demonstrate concern for retaining the physical and spiritual integrity of cemeteries, including but not specifically Jewish cemeteries, the last amendment allows local authorities the option of making changes after proper review. Since local governments are now elected, and pursue policies with more independence than in Communist years, it is important to monitor the effect of this change, and increase vigilance in local planning decisions.
The Citizens' Committee has fostered local efforts to protect and restore Jewish cemeteries. Although small efforts for the most part, they do demonstrate a sensitivity and willingness to help by many Christian Poles. Restoration projects carried out by the Citizens' Committee and other similar local groups, such as those involved in the Jewish cemeteries in Warsaw and Lublin, were planned in coordination with local conservation authorities.
The 1983 publication of Time of Stones, by Committee member Monika Krajewska, helped bring the condition of Polish Jewish cemeteries to greater international attention. For the first time a wide public saw the sad beauty of the remains of Jewish cemeteries, and was alerted to the dangers they face. The photographic archive of Polish cemeteries, the largest known collection, can be consulted at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Givat Ram, Jerusalem.
Polish government funds have been provided by the conservator of Warsaw and the Polish Lottery Monopoly. The Citizens' Committee raised about $10,000 from private donors in Poland and abroad between 1981 and 1990, but this sum was sufficient to save only a small number of monuments. The work of the Citizens' Committee, now encouraged by the freer political climate in Poland, has sparked a number of cemetery preservation efforts by local groups.
Abandoned cemeteries in areas where there are no Ionger Jews are nominally cared for by the regional Conservators' office, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture. Some conservation offices, such as those of Warsaw, Krakow, Bialystok, Kielce, and Wroclaw have beoun to document these cemeteries. In the Bialystok region, for example, the regional Conservator compiled information on 37 abandoned Jewish cemeteries, but this is only a fraction of what once existed. In the city of Bialystok itself, only one of six cemeteries remains, and this is partially destroyed.
Most regional Conservators' offices do not have the resources either to protect the cemeteries adequately, or to restore them. Several Polish conservation officials told survey staff that when they get money they do what they can, but this rarely exceeds monitoring current conditions. In the present economic crisis, many regional offices can barely manage to keep their offices open.
In addition to the example of Dzialoszyce, already mentioned, there has been in the last decade a vast increase in the number of direct interventions from abroad on behalf of particular cemeteries. This work is usually funded by individual Holocaust survivors and descendants of emigrants from the town, including organized landsmanshaftn organizations in Israel and the United States. Recent work at Jewish cemeteries includes the erection of Holocaust memorials, the repairing or adding of walls and gates, the clearing of overgrowth, and the cleaning and reerecting of gravestones. There are now 0 about 190 cemeteries (many of which have no visible stones) completely surrounded by walls or fences. This work, much of it recent, is just the beginning of what needs to be done.
The results of the survey indicate that some clearing, fencing, and restoration work has been carried out at about one seventh of the sites visited, including the cemeteries of Bielsko-Biala, Bilgoraj, Bransk, Chrzanow, Cieszyn, Dabrowa Tarnowska, Dzialoszyce, Gora Kalwaria, Kazimierza Wielka, Kolbuszowa, Laskarzew, Lomza, Lubaczow, Makow Mazowiecki, Nidzica,, Przasnysz, Sanok, Sicdlce, Sochaczew, Staszow, Tarnogrod, Tarnow, Trzebinia, Tyszowce, Wisnicz, Wodzislaw, and Zabrze. Private foundations have sponsored the enclosure and clearing of cemeteries in Buk, Czestochowa, Kielce, Krosno, Lublin, Sanok, Slubice, and Warsaw (Praga).
Professional conservation work on endangered matzevot and large commemorative monuments has been undertaken in only a few cities - Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, Radom, and Lodz. The most important historic and artistic work now under restoration is the monument to Ber Sonnenberg in the Okopowa Street cemetery in Warsaw.
Many circumstances are contributing to the surge in cemetery restoration work. First, while such action is still difficult, the new political openness of Poland makes it easier to initiate and carry out projects, and to find local enthusiasts and volunteers to help organize the work and to look after the cemetery when restoration is complete. Second, the greater ease of travel to and within Poland makes many of these cemeteries accessible for the first time. Third, the advancing age of Holocaust survivors is a factor. For many, proper care for the graves of their families and ancestors is a necessary religious, political, and psychological act before death. Finally, the increased interest in Genealogy and pre-Communist Polish history (i.e., when Poland had a sizable Jewish population) adds to the numbers of people who support cemetery restoration.
Examples of recent restoration projects, some of which might serve as models for subsequent work include:
- Voluntary Adoption of Cemeteries by Jewish Survivors Abroad
Dabrowa Bialostocka. This cemetery with stones dating to 1772 has been restored through the efforts of two elderly sisters, Rena Holstein and Lilly Gritz of Silver Spring, Maryland. After a visit in 1987, the sisters vowed to restore the cemetery where generations of their family are buried. Over a five-year period they raised approximately $10,000. A Dabrowa resident, who knew the sisters before 1939, organized and oversaw the work. The boundaries of the cemetery have been marked, the underbrush cleared, 80 stones reset, a new wall built around the cemetery, and a new wrought-iron gate erected. A memorial monument at the cemetery was dedicated in June 1995.
Hrubleszow. The cemetery, desecrated and neglected for years, was to be built over by apartment blocks when in 1983 a former resident of the town, Shalom Greenberg, visited from Israel and took the matter up with the town council. He began gathering fragments of gravestones from around town. Since then about 70 fragments have been located and returned to the cemetery. Several years later, Avram Schor, a former Jew from Hrubicszow now living in Munich, contributed funds for a fence around the cemetery and a monument to the former Jewish community. Stefan Knapp, a Polish émigré living in London, designed the monument. In July 1990 the fenced cemetery and monument were dedicated and a delegation of survivors from Hrubieszow visited their town for the occasion.
Kety. The cemetery was cleared of vegetation, the walls were repaired and broken matzevot were used in a memorial wall, all at the urging of Holocaust survivor and Pennsylvania resident dent Henry Kanner, who first visited the cemetery in 1988. City officials and the local priest helped with the effort which was financed by Kanner, who also pays for a full-time caretaker. The project, completed in 1992, took one and half years to finish.
Lublin. The New Jewish Cemetery, which had been severely damaged in World War II and was subsequently divided and partially built over by Lenin Street in the 1960s, has a new entrance and is being restored. The cemetery is being maintained through funds from Sara and the Manfred Frenkel Foundation of Antwerp (Belgium).
Oswiecim. Efforts to retrieve stolen ,gravestones from this cemetery were undertaken immediately following World War 11 by the local authorities at the urging of returning survivors. A wall of gravestones was then erected around the cemetery lot. This was replaced by a new fence and gate in 1980s, and approximately 1000 gravestones were then 'led up on the site. Beginning in 1986 efforts led by Rabbi Asher Scharf of Brooklyn, whose family lived in Oswiecim for generations, resulted in the recrection of gravcstones and the rebuilding of a family ohel. Rabbi Scharf describes how difficult it was to undertake such work less than a decade ago: "I don't have to tell you that the whole thing was illegal. Everything belonged to the government. There was no private enterprise. You had to buy cement on the black market and also blocks, sand, roofing paper, etc. But where there is a will there is a way. It took me three years and $20,000 - and four trips to Poland - and mission accomplished."
Warsaw (Praga cemetery). This cemetery, in the Praga section of Warsaw, was the first of many cemetery restoration projects undertaken by the Nissenbaum Family Foundation of Konstanz (Germany). The cemetery, which was established in 1780, was completely devastated during the war. The area has been cleaned and a new monumental pylon gate and memorial have been erected at the entrance to the site.
Staszow. In November 1992 a new Holocaust memorial was dedicated in Staszow, where 5,000 Jews were deported to their deaths in 1942. The cemetery has also been cleared and marked. This was a project taken on by the town under the sponsorship of Jack Goldfarb, a survivor from the town. The dedication ceremony, attended by almost four hundred people, was sponsored by the Staszow Cultural Society. A Jewish section was also inaugurated in the Staszow Town Museum.
- Restoration by Local Jewish Community
Zawiercle-Kromolow. In 1991-92, the Jewish Community of Katowice undertook the restoration of this historic cemetery, established c. 1750. The site, which covers 2.2 hectares, retains over half of its ordinal gravestones (more than 500 in situ). The cemetery is owned by the Katowice Jewish Community which has paid for a caretaker and repair of the surrounding masonry wall.
- Efforts of Local Polish Groups
Grodzisk Mazowlecki. At Grodzisk Mazowiecki, not far from Warsaw, where the condition of the cemetery is typical of many in Poland, a Social Committee for Restoration and Reconstruction of the Jewish Cemetery was founded in 1990. In its own words, the Social Committee is "animated by motives of consolidation and preservation of cultural and spiritual heritage of Polish Jews, with sympathetic backing, of both community and authorities..." The conservator of monuments for the Warsaw region carried out a preservation plan of the site, and the Committee built a fence around the site, which unfortunately was reduced from its original size. Much of the impetus for this work comes from the local Agricultural-Trade Cooperative, which now occupies much of the original site of the cemetery. Only about one seventh of the original cemetery survives as unencumbered open space.
Kozmin. The Citizens' Committee helped handicapped school children to set up about 150 gravestones and construct an enclosure. Work was completed in 1992, and additional funds were received from the state-financed Remembrance Foundation.
Lublin. At the old cemetery in Lublin about 50 gravestones dating from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries - some of them unfortunately already broken - were reerected by the local Society for Care of Monuments of Jewish Culture in Lublin with assistance from the Citizens' Committee in Warsaw. These stones, however, are not set in their original locations, but are distributed along a path through the cemetery.
Mlawa. At Mlawa, Germans had forced Jews to shatter gravestones so that the pieces could be used to build the foundations and the square fence posts around a military area, called "New Berlin" which they created about fifteen kms. from the town. A local organization, the "Friends of the Region of Mlawa", developed plans for the erection of a memorial at the cemetery of Mlawa, which a sculptor from Torun designed. The fence piers, which were made of the mortared pieces of matzevot, were to be transported to the cemetery, and to stand as symbolic flames of an enormous menorah. Each pier is about two meters high, and 60 x 60 cm. square. The Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw contacted the Mlawa landmanshaftn in Israel and a model of the project was exhibited in Tel Aviv. No funds, however, were raised, and to date, only seven of ten remaining piers have been removed to the cemetery, and the monument project is in abeyance. Nonetheless, the transferal of the piers was the occasion for a commemoration - a many survivors from Israel returned for the occasion.
Opatow. About 20 matzevot have been retrieved from the river where they had been thrown after the war, and set up on the unoccupied part of the cemetery.
Warsaw. The World War 11 devastation in the main cemetery of Warsaw, at Okopowa Street, with over 200,000 graves representing two centuries of settlement, and subsequent neglect, have created a critical situation. It has been necessary to cut down overgrown trees and bushes in order to keep working on the preservation of monuments. The results, however, are not very visible, since the cemetery spans 33 hectares. The Citizen's Committee has restored about 150 historic matzevot dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century and a dozen or so monuments made of marble and iron, including the gravestones of Antoni Eisenbaum, Chaim Zcll,, Slonimski, and Rabbi Ber Meisels. In 1993 restoration was begun on the artistically important monument to Ber Sonnenberg. The estimated cost for restoring this one tomb is $35,000. Because it has been vandalized several times, some have advocated that the entire monument be removed to a museum and replaced by a replica. If this were to be done, the cost would, of course, considerably increase.
- Restoration by Town or Region
Kazimierz Dolny. One of the most effective "restorations" of a Jewish cemetery is in Kazimierz Dolny. In 1983, the broken gravestones removed from the Franciscan monastery which had been used as Gestapo headquarters could not be returned to their original places at the cemetery just outside of town. Townspeople commissioned architect Tadeusz Augustynek to design a memorial that would appropriately place the stones. They have been attached to form a giant memorial wall, 25 meters long and six meters high, on the site of the cemetery. The wall acts not only as a repository for the stones and a commemoration of all those buried in the cemetery, but also serves with dramatic impact as a surrogate headstone for all those Jews from the town (and from elsewhere who were murdered and received no burial at all). A jagged opening in the wall represents the broken lives and rent fabric of the Jewish community, and town of Kazimierz. Monika and Stanilaw Krajewski worked on the project with the architect, first excavating the broken gravestones and then cleaning and sorting them. Stones of men and women were separated, because that was the arrangement in the cemetery. Despite setbacks, the monument was completed in the autumn of 1984. Additional stones were reerected behind the monument, on the wooded cemetery grounds.
Krakow. The old cemetery of Krakow, situated behind the sixteenth-century Remu Synagogue, has been restored, essentially as a lapidarium, since the original locations of the several hundred retrieved stones is unknown. Since 1991, additional work has taken place. Sponsored by the volvodship of Krakow, broken stones are restored with new pieces added, and many stones are receiving metal "hats" to protect them better from the pervasive acid rain which is causing deterioration of the stone. The work has been partly carried out under the auspices of the Project Judaica Foundation (Washington, D.C.) in collaboration with the Jagiellonian University. Unfortunately, the much larger new cemetery in Krakow, not far away, remains uncared for.
Pinczow. Fragments of old gravestones were rescued from ruined buildings and set into the wall surrounding the former synagogue. There are now buildings on the grounds of the old cemetery.
Tarnow. Led by Adam Bartosz, curator of the State Gypsy Museum in Tarnow, a group of residents has worked to repair the Jewish cemetery, in which several thousand stones, some dating to the seventeenth century, still survive. The surrounding wall and fence have been repaired at town expense, and much of the older section of the cemetery has been cleared of excess vegetation - revealing serious problems of stone erosion and decay. The gate of the cemetery was presented as a gift to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by President Lech Walesa and a copy, a gift from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has been installed in its place. About 30% of funds for the cemetery restoration work come from the town and approximately 70% of funds are private donations from abroad. Much basic clearing work still needs to be done in this large cemetery.
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Source: S. Gruber and P. Myers: SURVEY OF HISTORIC JEWISH MONUMENTS IN POLAND, published in 1995 by the Jewish Heritage Council, World Monuments Fund, and the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, pp. 31-42