Poland’s Cultural Heritage Foundation, in cooperation with technology company Laboratorium EE, has launched an app aimed at encouraging (and enabling) the volunteer documentation of abandoned, neglected, and/or remote Jewish and other cemeteries in Poland and elsewhere — by tourists and other visitors.
“Thanks to the application, everyone can contribute to the social database of abandoned cemeteries in Poland and abroad as part of the Forgotten Cemeteries project,” the Foundation said on its web site.
The project focuses on abandoned or neglected cemeteries of all denominations, collecting photos and information such as location, size, inscriptions, etc and collating the material on the new Forgotten Cemeteries website — www.zapomnianecmentarze.org.
“Thanks to this, other people will be able to find such a cemetery, visit it and organize cleaning actions in the future,” it said.
The project is aimed at ordinary citizens who might visit — or stumble upon — a remote or neglected cemetery while hiking or even on vacation.
“When traveling around Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, such as Ukraine, Lithuania or Latvia, it is enough to go beyond larger urban centers to find smaller and larger cemeteries of various denominations,” the web site said.
These smaller necropolises are often places we come across by accident – during hiking trips to the vicinity of the forest or on smaller roads between villages. Such places are rarely visited anymore, with time the inscriptions on stone monuments fade and the cast-iron tablets on the crosses are covered with rust. We want to encourage everyone who finds such places – by accident or on purpose – to document them.
Michal Laszczkowski, President of the Cultural Heritage Foundation, underscored that the Foundation has been collecting information about cemeteries for years — among other things, it is overseeing a project to restore the vast Okopowa St Jewish cemetery in Warsaw and organizes the “Coalition of the Guardians,” a network of volunteers and organizations maintaining Jewish cemeteries in Poland. It also carries out work in Christian cemeteries.
“In many [cemeteries] we have conducted volunteer campaigns – cleaning and education; we are also carrying out conservation works,” he said. “We know from experience that very valuable monuments can be found in hidden or rarely visited places. “
The new “cmentariusz” app can be downloaded for free for Android and iOS phones and also launched on your web browser.
NOTE: So far it is only available in Polish
Click HERE to download from Google Play
Click HERE to download from the Apple App Store
Web version: https://cmentariusz.codemagic.app/
Watch a video about the the app and how it works (in Polish)
See more information about the app and project (in Polish)