In the following Report, Dr. Heidi M. Szpek, a translator, epigrapher and historian of the Bagnowka Jewish cemetery in Białystok, Poland, and author of a book about it, describes the restoration work accomplished during the 2022 session carried out by the Białystok Cemetery Restoration Project (BCRP), including statistics of work completed, highlights from the inscriptions — and what she defines as the 2022 story….the rescue of some 120 matzevot from the early 19th century Rabbinical Cemetery that had been buried for decades under a mound of earth.
“August with Tsvi: A Restoration Report”
By Dr. Heidi M. Szpek
September 2022
Work to Date
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic along with the war in Ukraine prompted the board of the Białystok Cemetery Restoration Project to reconfigure its Summer 2022 restoration plans for Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery in Białystok, Poland. This was the first field session of the BCRP since before the pandemic. Typically, the BCRP would be joined by a contingent of American, German, Israeli, and Białystok volunteers. This year’s efforts, however, focused on meeting with local conservators and trades people to assess and coordinate the restoration and repair of a variety of cemetery structures, initiating the first formal restoration workshop for local volunteers, and conducting a test of a mound on an unused area of Bagnowka Cemetery.
BCRP Board Members Amy and Josh Degen, Dr. Heidi Szpek and volunteer photographer Frank Idzikowski travelled from the U.S. to Bialystok to be joined by Białystok Board Member, Dr. Andrzej Końdej, our newest liaison, Dr. Andrzej Rusewicz, President, Association of the Museum of Białystok Jews, and Filip Szczepański, Rabbinic Commission in Warsaw.
Amidst the challenges of coordinating from afar and past expectations, we were greeted with unexpected positivity from the City of Białystok, the Chief Rabbi of Poland’s office, and the local Jewish representative, Lucy Lisowska.
At the conclusion of this season’s work, nearly 70 tombstones had been reset on Bagnowka, bringing the total since 2016 (excluding non-work 2020-2021 during the pandemic) to 1478; 123 stones had been rescued from the mound; and more than a dozen meetings with conservators and local tradespeople had been held, regarding design concepts for five projects underway, including pending fencing and gate estimates, as well as City of Białystok commitments.
New vital records will be disseminated via Jewish Record Indexing-Poland (JRI-Poland) and JOWBR later this Fall. They are also temporarily available at the Burial Registry at www.jewishepitaphs.org
The surreal atmosphere of this summer’s efforts was foreshadowed when we were greeted on cemetery by … Tsvi, the deer!
Restoration Meetings
BCRP Board Members and local liaisons, in coordination with Białystok conservator Dariusz Stankiewicz, met with hands-on local conservators Małgorzata Andron and Krzyszstof Stawecki to discuss concepts and costs to restore the Memorial Pillar that commemorates two 1905 Massacres and the 1906 Pogrom in Bialystok and the ohel for Chief Rabbi Chaim Hertz Halpern (d. 1921), as well as a color restoration for the tombstone of the religious scholar, Rabbi Benjamin Isaiah Paszkowski (d. 1935), featured in our 2019 report.
Białystok liaison Dr. Rusewicz coordinated our meeting with Dr. Jerzy Uścinowicz, professor of religious architecture, University of Białystok, for a design concept to create a symbolic ohel on the foundation of the former ohel for Chief Rabbi Shmuel Mohilewer (d. 1898). (Dr. Uścinowicz had earlier produced a design concept for the restoration of the Mohilewer Synagogue in Białystok.)
Meetings were also conducted with trades people for replacement fencing and wrought-iron works for a new entrance gate. Most productive was our onsite meeting with Bialystok’s Vice-President, Rafał Rudnicki, who acknowledged the city’s financial responsibility for repairing and/or rebuilding the southern wall of this cemetery, for providing systematic clearing of the northern third of this cemetery, for arranging a city water connection to the cemetery, and for coordinating open access Spring through Fall for this cemetery, which has been locked since 2017.
And each morning, our arrival was under scrutiny of … Tsvi, the deer.
Estimates will be available shortly and design concepts are in preparation. By the end of October decisions will be made as to the order of these restoration projects.
Workshop
BCRP Summercamps are traditionally a time of training new volunteers under the supervision of experienced Board Members and longtime volunteers amidst the flurry of restoration itself.
This Summer’s two-day workshop provided the same expertise to a group of a dozen Białystokers within the confines of one section of the cemetery that adjoins the Memorial Pillar. Local volunteers included a tour guide/genealogist, a University of Bialystok professor of engineering, a doctor of psychiatry, and a musician, as well as strong men, strong women and one amazingly precocious 12-year-old, future scholar and activist, along with her grandfather, our new liaison, Dr. Andrzej Rusewicz.
The Workshop began with a cemetery tour to educate volunteers not only about the history of Bagnowka Cemetery and its epitaphic tradition but also to observe the spatial layout of this cemetery and burial patterns, all critical for the restoration process.
Demonstrations were given by BRCP Board members on how to lift and reset small tombstones, strategies for determining proper replacement, formulaic components to assist in determining the gender of a tombstone – gender is critical in re-placement of a tombstone as rows are gender specific, and best practices in washing a tombstone. (Best practices in cemetery restoration were a key focus in Summercamp 2019.)
At the end of the second day, nearly 65 stones were stabilized or reset, half of the dirtiest were washed, and all were documented.
The first tombstone reset in this workshop remembered … Tsvi Hirsh b. Moshe David Goldberg (d. 1905). And each day, we were welcomed by Tsvi, the deer, … and once, Tsviah.
Our week of meetings and the workshop concluded in time to prepare for a Shabbat gathering at the Citron Synagogue.
Dr. Heidi Szpek delivered an illustrated presentation on her nearly two decades of research and restoration work on Bagnowka Cemetery, the Degens spoke of the inspiration and founding of the Białystok Cemetery Restoration Fund, and Amy Degen recited the Shabbat blessings for possibly the first time in this synagogue since 1941.
Translation from English to Polish was conducted by Dr. Rusewicz, whose organization sponsored this evening event, with presentations filmed, creatively edited, and published by Dr. Tomasz Wiśniewski. The evening concluded with bialys and buza (local drink) as participants and attendees recognized the importance of cooperation as the key to restoring Bagnowka Cemetery.
On Sunday, the Association of the Museum of Białystok Jews sponsored a tour of the cemetery led by Dr. Szpek with over 50 community members in attendance. Some BCRP members and Friends of Jewish Cemetery in Poland member Bill Brostoff also toured the regional Jewish cemeteries of Krynki, Knyszyn, Trzcianne, Nowogród, Goniądz and Jedwabne with Dr. Tomasz Wiśniewski.
The Mound: THE 2022 Story
According to local lore and history, in the 1960s, the Communist Party Headquarters was built just opposite the Rabbinic Cemetery at the center of Bialystok. Debris from this construction as well as debris from the ruined structures of surrounding streets was dumped on the Rabbinic Cemetery, creating an artificial mound which was transformed into the current Central Park.
Amidst this construction, for some reason, a portion of the Rabbinic Cemetery had first been cleared. Matzevoth and human remains were loaded into wagons and transferred to the edge of town to be dumped on the unused land of Bagnowka. In the 1970s – early 1980s, housing was also built on this unused land, the peculiar U-shaped street, leading to these homes, held within its curve the mound with an adjoining plain. Used as a neighborhood park, the mound was a favorite sledding hill for the neighborhood children.
Amidst planning for this summer’s work, another pressing issue prevailed, whether we would be given permission to conduct a test of the mound.
In 2010, I (Heidi) had been shown this mound by Dr. Andreas Kahr of Berlin, team leader for Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste (Action Reconciliation) organized by Centrum Edukacji Obywatelski Polska-Izrael w Białymstoku’s Lucy Lisowska, who began restoration work of Bagnowka.
Small earthen openings on the mound revealed Hebrew words engraved in stone, each too small to recognize, especially, a date. In the coming years, I would be brought back to this mound by various individuals, each hoping I could see something more.
In 2016, members of the BCRP also visited this mound and so began a yearly inquiry to conduct a test trench that would answer the questions: Which cemetery do these matzevot belong to? How many matzevot are there? Each year, oral traditions and legends would be recited by neighbors, with legends growing larger over the passing years. Other neighbors would ask why isn’t something done? Why isn’t respect shown to (what they knew) to be tombstones that once marked the graves of Bialystok’s Jews?
Throughout 2021 and on into the early months of 2022, the BCRP again began asking the Office of the Chief Rabbi of Poland and the Vice-President of Bialystok for permission to check the mound. A negative response from both offices prevailed.
Before departing for this summer’s work, the BCRP Board again asked permission to conduct a check. While their answers seemed once again negative, there was also a pause, a willingness to give a second thought to this test.
We arrived in Białystok uncertain as to whether permission would be granted this year. Shortly after arrival, however, the BCRP was joined by Filip Szczepański, key representative of the Rabbinic Commission of Jewish Cemeteries in Warsaw. Filip is an expert in Poland’s Jewish cemeteries, especially, and sadly, its mass Jewish graves. To our amazement, the Chief Rabbi’s Office was willing, messaging the Vice-President’s office. We had permission to conduct a check of the mound. Between meetings on the first formal workday – 8 August 2022, we visited the mound and carefully removed three stones whose inscriptions had only partially seen sunlight for many years.
As the first tombstone was uncovered, I (Heidi) read the given name now returned to the historic record … Tsvi Hirsh b. Avraham! Date of death – 4 October 1831.
Bagnowka functioned from 1891-1969; the Rabbinic Cemetery 1781- c. 1900; and the Bema Cemetery, established shortly after an outbreak of cholera in 1830, functioned until c. 1890. The date of 1831 suggested that this matzevah came from either the Rabbinic or Bema Cemetery.
The second tombstone – for a Shlomo b. Chaim recorded the date of death = 28 June 1820. The cemetery had to be the Rabbinic. A third tombstone for a Baruch Shlomo b. Meir dated to 31 October 1851. These three dates, especially 1820, confirmed their provenance was the Rabbinic Cemetery. Armed with this knowledge, we contacted the Chief Rabbi’s Office and the Vice-President’s Office asking for permission to extract the matzevoth from this mound and temporarily store them in Bagnowka.
Our Workshop and meetings continued; simultaneously we planned for possible extraction. Before the Shabbath candles were lit by Amy Halpern Degen at the Citron Synagogue, verbal permission had been granted from the Office of the Chief Rabbi and the City of Bialystok. Yet written confirmation would be critical to assuage any onsite challenges.
Monday, August 15th was a National Holiday and a Holy Day in Poland, and we waited. Tuesday, August 16th was the 79thCommemoration of the Bialystok Ghetto Uprising, preceded by the laying of flowers at the site of the Great Synagogue Burning in June 1941. The BCRP members were in attendance. Later that day, as we toured Yacob Livne, Israeli Ambassador to Poland, and Shmuel Rothman, Deputy and Vice Mayor of Yehud Monosson, on Bagnowka, the BCRP verbally was told that written confirmation would come the following day.
Wednesday, August 17th, 830am, written permission from Białystok’s President Tadeusz Truskalowski was brought to the mound and work began.
Five working days (August 17-21) followed for BCRP Board members, liaison Dr. Rusewicz, and several volunteers from the Workshop. (Ironically, the excavator used by Chair Josh Degen was rented from the fencing contractor we had consulted – no questions asked about its intended use!)
Watch a stunning video by Tomasz Wisniewski:
The mound held 122 boulder-style matzevoth, ranging in date from 1809 to 1852, this updated earliest date once again confirming the provenance as the Rabbinic Cemetery.
These boulder-style tombstones preserve the basic formulaic pattern: “Here lies + given name + father’s name + date of death + final blessing.”
Only three surnames are clearly inscribed: Halpern (3x), Lipshitz and Brestowicz, dating from 1840 to 1852.
The regional Jewish centers of Tiktin (Tykocin), to which Bialystok was subservient until the end of the 18th Century, and Orla are each mentioned once, as is the nearby town of Choroszcz. Women are typically described as “modest” and “respectable” and men as “perfect and upright and God-fearing”, drawing on the biblical language of Job (1:1). Women bear the designation Mrs./Miss (מרת) and men either as Mr. ( מר ) or Rabbi and Scholar ( הרבני ).
Just a few words of poetry occasionally appear.
More common are delightful folk-art cornflowers and scroll ornamentation.
Very intriguing, too, is the presence of occasional details derived from rabbinic notation, e.g. dots indicating a letter is used as a number or a cantillation mark indicating a pause. Ultimately, these mound matzevoth from the Rabbinic Cemetery are critical for our understanding of the epitaphic tradition that is fully developed in the Bagnowka Cemetery inscriptions.
As noted, the first boulder tombstone remembered a Tsvi, the last … also a Tsvi … with no men with that given name in between!
On the final day, as Degen was conducting final checks of the mound, the mound gave up a megalithic granite stele 3 m tall, weighing over 2 tons.
Its inscription was lengthy in contrast to the basic epitaphic formula of the boulder-style matzevoth — we dubbed it ‘the Miriam’ after the name of the deceased remembered in this inscription.
Miriam was the daughter of a Jehuda from Orla; she died on March 26, 1840. Orla, as noted, was one of two Jewish centers in the Bialystok region. Her epitaph also describes her as “a woman of valor” (Prov. 31:10) with excerpts from this proverb extoling Jewish women and concludes with a short prayer: “You will revive her in the resurrection of the dead with the remnant of your people, O Israel.”
This stele and its inscription remind us that the Rabbinic Cemetery also held an extensive epitaphic tradition and grandiose tombstones as recorded in historian Avraham Shmuel Herzberg’s Pinkos Bialystok. With the discovery of ‘the Miriam’, the extraction seemed to be at an end. However, BCRF photographer Frank Idzikowski, with a probing rod, had been checking the plain just adjacent to the mound. He discovered two more boulder-style matzevoth pressed firmly into this flat plain! Georadar is planned for this Fall to determine the presence of any additional matzevoth.’
The City of Białystok’s President’s Office called a press conference to be held the following day (August 22).
VP Rudnicki, Degen, Szpek, Rabbi Itzhak Rapaport, Szczepański, and Lisowska all spoke, formally announcing the extraction of the mound matzevoth, their provenance, initial plans for a memorial or lapidarium, reaffirmation of open access for Bagnowka Cemetery, and extensive words of appreciation by all parties to all parties for the opportunity to right the wrong evidenced by this mound and the still-needed restoration of Bagnowka Cemetery.
All were then invited to the reinterment of human bones found amidst the mound matzevoth.
The presence of human bones had not been publicly announced amidst the matzevot’s extraction.
Szczepański had worked in consultation with the Chief Rabbi’s Office and the City of Bialystok prosecutor shortly after the first remains were discovered.
The context of their find suggested they were either from burials on the Rabbinic Cemetery or from the devastation also done to Bagnowka. Bones were carefully gathered, placed in clean paper bags, and carefully stored until reinterment. A location in Bagnowka, beneath a copse of oak trees not far from the Memorial Pillar, was chosen by Szczepański, guided by Szpek, to reinter the bones.
As noted, attendees at the press conference were invited to the re-interment. Rabbi Rapaport and Szczepański respectfully wrapped the remains in new cotton sheets and then in a new tallit. Gently, the remains were placed in the hole earlier dug by Szczepański and Degen; those in attendance took turns replacing the earth.
And Rabbi Rapaport began, “There are two things we can do for the dead, bury them and pray for them. We have done the first, now we pray.”
And so beneath the filtered sunlight in the shadow of the oaks, the mournful tones of El Male Rahamim could be heard on Bagnowka, possibly for the first time since the last burial in 1969.
An uninscribed but worked boulder from the mound matzevoth was laid atop the gravesite, to be engraved in the coming months in remembrance.
The finality of this burial reminded us that the matzevot we extract, reset, wash and, at times, repaint, are not simply stone edifices to memory. They are intrinsically linked to people, who once walked where we now do, yet – in the case of the mound matzevoth, not only their stones but their final resting places were violated.
Tsvi, the deer, did not appear at the reinterment.
He did appear in nearly each of the coming days as the final mound matzevot were transferred to Bagnowka and final documentation details were checked and rechecked.
For those concerned with the fate of Tsvi, especially in light of the coming open access policy, and especially since a Tsviah was seen twice, animal control has been contacted to gently sedate these precious creatures and transfer them to the woods outside the city.
And one final coincidence in the mystical side-story of Tsvi remains to be told.
Awaiting the excavator’s pickup, Degen decided to lift several tombstones back on Bagnowka … and randomly he returned to the first stone at right on entering the main entrance.
Assumed to be a supportive plinth whose tombstone had been stolen, ten seasons of restoration had bypassed this gravesite. Something drew Degen to reconsider the unworked stone, peering from the earth, before the plinth.
Excavator gently met the earth, which gave up a boulder-style tombstone that could easily be among the mound matzevoth.
On returning from the mound to the main cemetery, Degen showed Szpek this newest find.
To Szpek’s amazement, the tombstone dated to 24 December 1891, three days after the dedication and first burial on this cemetery. This tombstone was now the oldest extant tombstone on Bagnowka! Perhaps equally amazing, the tombstone remembered an Ita Riba, daughter of … R. Tsvi Ari.
And so, we welcome back to the historic record nearly 200 of Białystok’s Jewish ancestors.
May their souls be bound in the bond of the living.
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Dr. Heidi M. Szpek is Emerita Professor of Religious Studies at Central Washington University and translator and historian of the Bagnowka Jewish cemetery; she is also a member of the board of the Białystok Cemetery Restoration Project. She edits the web site www.jewishepitaphs.org and is the author of the book Bagnówka: A Modern Jewish Cemetery on the Russian Pale.
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- Ecuador: (European) Jewish Heritage in “an Unknown Country”
- Poland: How WW2 Luftwaffe Aerial Photos Reveal Lost Jewish Heritage in Białystok
- Poland: Using WW2 Luftwaffe Aerial Photos to Document the History of the Bagnówka Jewish Cemetery in Białystok
- Report: 2017 Białystok Jewish Cemetery Restoration Project
- Report: Białystok Jewish Cemetery Restoration Project, 2019
- The Destruction of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland — Excerpts in English from a major new Polish book by Krzysztof Bielawski