In our new Have Your Say personal essay, Dr. Heidi M. Szpek writes beautifully about how she was drawn to reading and translating the epitaphs on the gravestones in the Bagnówka Jewish cemetery in Białystok, Poland and thus reveal vivid portraits of Białystok’s Jews, their lives, and their community. The epitaphs, she writes, provide poignant connections to a world now gone.
Dr. Szpek has been involved with the restoration of the Bagnówka cemetery for the past decade. Her new book Bagnówka: A Modern Jewish Cemetery on the Russian Pale was recently published by iUniverse.