The town of Grodzisk Mazowiecki near Warsaw has — for the moment — suspended a plan that would build a residential complex with underground parking on the site of the Jewish cemetery pending investigations to determine the cemetery’s borders.
JTA reports that after objections by the Warsaw Jewish community and local activist Robert Augustyniak, the city council held a public discussion of the plan on Monday. Following the meeting, Mayor Grzegorz Benedykcinski “suspended action on the plan pending clarification of the cemetery’s boundaries.”
Virtual Shtetl notes that “The cemetery was devastated by Germans during World War II. In the end of the 1940s, 80% of the cemetery grounds were taken over by the ‘Peasants’ Self-Help’ Cooperative which established a machinery and building supply store there. For the last two years, a scrapyard has been located there.”
It says that the small part of the Jewish cemetery that was fenced off and maintained as a Jewish cemetery was excluded from the plans to build the residential complex.
Nonetheless, the new housing estate would be erected on hundreds of graves. The construction of the estate would mean their destruction. The master plan does not provide for the protection of the pre-war cemetery gate covered with Hebrew inscriptions which is now standing in the middle of the scrapyard.
JTA reported that Augustyniak raised his objections to the plan during the town hall discussion, showing a pre-World War II map showing the area of the cemetery. The Warsaw Jewish community also raised objections.
“I showed the map of the area from 1927 and 1934,” Augustyniak told JTA. “It clearly shows that the area of the cemetery was much larger than it is today. It seems that the council did not know about it. I hope that now they will change their plans.”
It appears now that that the town, in collaboration with the Jewish community, will investigate the situation.
Read the Virtual Shtetl description of the cemetery and its history