Poland: Around 2,500 fragments of matzevot used by the Nazis to construct underground rooms have been recovered from beneath a parking lot in Janów Lubelski

This autumn, around 2,500 fragments of matzevot were extracted from beneath the parking lot of the City Hall in Janów Lubelski, a small town near Lublin in eastern Poland. The Nazi German occupiers had used them to build three underground rooms whose purpose is not known..

Carried out between October 28 and November 7, the work was spearheaded by the NGO Janowski Bench of Dialogue Association, which had long lobbied for the matzevot to be recovered.  It was supervised by the Association and the local Regional Museum and carried out with municipal and district funding. 

The number of fragments  “exceeded our imagination,” the Association said in a Facebook post. “Now we have to face the next stage – cleaning, documentation, reading, and finally the method and form of displaying them.”

Half of Janów Lubelski’s pre-WW2 population was Jewish, and the town had two Jewish cemeteries. The old cemetery, in use until 1826, was completed destroyed during World War II and today is built over by houses. The new cemetery, in use from 1826 until the Holocaust, was severely damaged during World War II, and, according to the ESJF, its remaining gravestones were removed under the communist government in 1971.

The excavated fragments range in size and include some intact matzevot. Some of the recovered pieces still bear well preserved carving and vivid painted decoration. They have been transported and secured for the winter on the grounds of the destroyed new Jewish cemetery, and documentation work will begin in the spring.

The recovery of the matzevot “has both a symbolic and historical dimension,” the Bend of Dialogue Association’s leader Zbigniew Nita said in a Facebook post. “Not only are we restoring a material part of its events to the city, but also the memory of the Jewish community, Polish citizens, Janovians, who lived with us on the same streets for centuries.”

It had been known since 2009 that the Nazi-built construction had included matzevot.  Talks began in 2023 about what to do with the site and the matzevot. Participants included local and district officials as well as the Association and representatives of Poland’s Rabbinical Committee for Cemetery Affairs, Nita said in a post.

Watch a local TV report while the excavation was going on — it has an automatically generated sound track in English — the report starts at minute 15:08: