Poland experienced a “ground-breaking year” in Jewish cemetery preservation in 2021, as more than 10,000 volunteers took part in more than 200 campaigns to clean up and preserve nearly 100 Jewish cemeteries around the country.
The news comes in an end of year report by the Coalition of Guardians of Jewish Cemeteries, a recently formed network of NGOs, individual activists, and institutions dedicated to caring for Jewish cemeteries in Poland.
“We knew that all over Poland there are people who care about Jewish heritage. We did not know, however, that there are so many of them,” Michał Laszczkowski, president of the Cultural Heritage Foundation and initiator of the Coalition, said in the report. “When you connect separate actions into a network, it automatically generates new ones of the similar kind. We already know of a dozen or so neglected cemeteries that may be covered next year too.”
Volunteer clean-up and restoration work took place — sometimes more than once — in the Jewish cemeteries in:
Sieniawa, Iwaniska, Tarnowskie Góry, Łódź, Świdwin, Brzesko, Mysłowice, Cieszyn, Wieliczka, Staszów, Nowy Żmigród, Sokołów Małopolski, Warsaw, Suchowola, Głogówek, Jędrzejów, Jasło, Nowy Targ, Kielce, Mielec, Pabianszice, Grybów, Pabianszczyzna, Pabianszczyzna, , Będzin, Leśnica, Czechowice Dziedzice, Zambrów, Częstochowa, Dukla Rymanów, Kraśnik, Ostrów Mazowiecka, Biały Bór, Małogoszcz, Orla, Szczebrzeszyn, Sędziszów Małopolski, Łomża, Żory, Janów Lubelski, Gliwice, Mirosławiec, Mielec, Siedliszcze, Sidbiszech , Dąbrowa Białostocka, Kalisz, Katowice, Kazimierz Dolny, Goniądz, Tykocin, Tuszyn, Zduńska Wola, Żarki, Brzeziny, Ryczywole, Turek, Dębowa, Płock, Lubaczów, Niezdrowice, Zielona Góra, Krapkowice, Wrocław, Bolimów, Warpnie, Lublin, Bieruń, Mikołów, Rusocice, Biała, Trzemeszno.
We linked to many of these initiatives in our roundups of Jewish cemetery cleanups, HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE.
The most consistent actions took place in Łódź, at the largest Jewish cemetery in Poland, where Tadeusz Ołubek, a probation officer, has employed people sentenced to community service almost every week for the last four years to clear wild trees, bushes, and other vegetation. They and volunteers have almost completely cleaned up the 45-hectare cemetery. In addition, “Ołubek also conducts educational activities, teaching about the Jewish history of Łódź. In 2021 alone he organized over 40 of such events.”
Warsaw’s Okopowa St. Jewish cemetery — the second largest in Poland — also saw consistent action, with 27 volunteer clean-up initiatives throughout the year, organized by Laszczkowski. “A total of over 600 people took active part, mostly students of Warsaw schools, who were there practically every Sunday to clear up sections of the cemetery of leaves and soil,” the report said. “In the process they revealed tombstones, often of great historical and artistic value.”
Other major, consistent actions took place in several smaller cemeteries in Upper Silesia, where the Coalition of Guardians of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland backed a local Jewish activist, Sławek Pastuszka, who “succeeded in persuading over a dozen mayors to get involved in cleaning up cemeteries in their cities. Over 600 people took part in four cleanup events at the Jewish cemetery in Katowice alone,” the report stated.
The Coalition cooperates and partners with Jewish authorities in Poland, including the Rabbinical Commission for Cemeteries, which provides guidelines for work given religious restrictions. “Members of the Coalitions train volunteers in working with accordance to the Halacha,” the report says..
In another development, the Coalition announced its first “Ambassador” — Nobel Prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann, who was born in what is now Zolokhiv, Ukraine. Watch a video of him talking about the importance of maintaining Jewish cemeteries:
The Coalition is a project of the Foundation for Cultural Heritage and is co-financed by the Polish Foreign Ministry. Partners of the Coalition project include the Warsaw Jewish Community, the Polish Culture Ministry, the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ), and the National Heritage Board, as well as others.
The Cultural Heritage Foundation identifies the needs of caregivers and tries to obtain subsidies for their implementation. Not all cemetery caretakers in Poland have joined the Coalition, but membership is not a condition for receiving support, it says in the report. In 2021, the report states, it provided more than PLN 300,000 (€65 000) in such support obtained from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the National Center for Culture, the National Institute of Freedom, the Ministry of the Interior and Administration and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Read the full report, with details of more of the actions
Coalitions of Guardians web site
Our article about the announcement of the Coalition, in August 2020
3 comments on “Poland: 2021 Saw a record number of Jewish cemetery clean-ups in Poland — more than 10,000 volunteers in more than 200 campaigns”
My mother’s ancestors were from Raczki, Poland. The cemetery, next to a farmer’s field, is overgrown, with a single stone partly visible. Who might be interested in uncovering and reclaiming this small cemetery?
How about the wonderful people in nowe miasto nad pilica, that put concrete over the cemetery.My Family thanks you!
I know the Jewish Cemetery in Radomsko had at least two days of cleanup. Perhaps one day, there will be one in Wloszczowa.