Archaeologists have uncovered the foundations of the pre-burial house in Warsaw’s Bródno Jewish cemetery — the city’s oldest Jewish burial site, which was largely ravaged during and after World War II.
The results “managed to capture everything that survived the destruction of World War II and the postwar period,” the archaeological service company Wykop na Poziomie, which carried out the work on behalf of the Warsaw Jewish Community and financed by the Mazovia Region Monuments Conservation office (MWKZ), said in a Facebook post.
Many of the gravestones were removed and used for construction, and most of the vast area is now bare fields or covered by new wooded areas, though a few stones have been re-erected in random positions.
But many thousands of uprooted gravestones still lie piled up in huge heaps at the far end of the cemetery grounds — an eerie, desolate, and powerfully moving sight.
A mausoleum memorial begun in the 1980s but never finished, made of gravestones and fragments, stands in their midst.
An informative museum and information center, Bejt Almin, was opened in 2018, showcasing both the history of the cemetery and Jewish funerary traditions.
Archaeological work and other research has been going on at the cemetery for several years.
Among other recent finds were the remains of two ohels discovered in 2023, which at the beginning of this were registered on the MWKZ’s list of monuments.
Other research work has revealed the original paths through the cemetery.
And experts have also restored some gravestones and displayed them — including one showing the original painted decoration.
Read our 2020 post about the cemetery
Access the digital database of the gravestones from the cemetery
Read our August 2018 article about the cemetery