Poland: an artificial mound outside the Bagnowka Jewish cemetery in Białystok could cover hundreds of matzevot dating back over 200 years

(JHE) — Excavations have begun at a large, artificial mound outside the Bagnowka Jewish cemetery in Białystok where researchers believe possibly hundreds of historic matzevot uprooted under communism from another cemetery were buried.

In an announcement, the US-based Białystok Cemetery Restoration Project (BCRP), which has been carrying out clean-up, research, and restoration work at Bagnowka, called identification of the mound as a site covering matzevot dating back over 200 years “an extremely important discovery of significant importance to the Jewish history of Białystok.”

The BCRP said both Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich and Białystok municipal authorities have granted permission
 “to explore the mound in a limited capacity.” The mound measures approximately 75 meters x 25 meters x 3 meters tall.

In addition, “Schudrich instructed us to temporarily move [unearthed matzevot] into an area within Bagnowka Cemetery where no burials had ever occurred for safe keeping until a formal plan can be approved.”  

Białystok’s mayor on Tuesday “formally granted written permission to perform this work under the guidance of Rabbi Schudrich’s cemetery expert.”

The systematic removal of the buried stones, the BCRP said, began this week, carried out “with expertly and experienced operators of specialized machinery.”

“Only a check of a few stones was planned this year,” lead cemetery researcher Dr. Heidi M. Szpek, Professor Emerita, Central Washington University and author of a book about the Bagnowka cemetery, told JHE. “Never did we imagine such approval would happen this fast.”

So far, there is no clear estimate of the number of matzevot that were buried under the mound. But in a Facebook post August 18, Szpek said that on the first day of work, “nearly 80 boulder stones, some megalithic,” had been removed.

Before systematic removal work began, the BCRP said,  three “pristine headstones with dates from 1820 to 1851″ had been unearthed as an initial probe.

The earliest dated tombstone (1820), the BCRP said,  “suggests these headstones belong to the Rabbinic Cemetery, which was the only functioning Jewish cemetery in Białystok at that time.”

One removed stone commemorates a man named Tzvi Hirsch and dates from 1831.

The Rabbinic Cemetery was razed and turned into the large, central city park under the post-World War II communist regime.

According to sources referenced by the BCRP, “the matzevot were cleared in the 1960s and transported to this new area [where the mound is], then covered with soil to obscure their presence.”

The BCRP has been conducting restoration and documentation work in the Bagnowka cemetery — the only Jewish cemetery in Białystok to survive intact — since 2016. Work was cancelled by COVID restrictions in 2020 and 2021, so this year’s session is the first since 2019.

Dr. Heidi M. Szpek’s web site about the Bagnowka cemetery