WARSAW: [WARSZAWA , [Falenica, Radosc, Varshe, Warschau, Varshava, Varsavia, Varsovie,]Last Updated Sunday, 24 December 2017 04:54

(in 1780) also used the cemetery at Sochaczew

ALTERNATE NAMES: WARSZAWA [POL], WARSAW [ENG], VARSHEand ווארשע [YID],WARSCHAU [GER], VARSHAVA and Варшава [RUS], VARŠAVA [CZ], VARSÓ [HUNG],VARSAVIA [LAT], VARSOVIE [FR], VARSOVIA [SP], VARŠUVA [LITH]

- Yizkor Books - Warshaw Di geshikte fun yidn in varshe (New York, 1948) - Dos amolike yidishe Varshe, biz der shvel fun dritn khurbn; yisker-bletlekh nokh tayerenoente umgekumene (Montreal, 1967) - Pinkes Varshe (Buenos Aires, 1955) - Warsaw (Jerusalem, 1953-1973) - Arim ve-imahot be-yisrael; matsevet kodesh le-kehilot yisrael she-nehrevu bi-yedeiaritsim u-tmeim be-milhemet ha-olam ha-aharona, vol. 3, Warsaw (Jerusalem, 1948) - Pinkas ha-kehilot; entsiklopediya shel ha-yishuvim le-min hivasdam ve-ad le-aher shoatmilhemet ha-olam ha-sheniya: Poland vol. 4: Warsaw and its region (Jerusalem, 1989)

- JOWBR:  Jewish Cemetery - JOWBR Landsmanshaft: (4): - Bathurst Lawn Memorial Park, North York, Canada - Mt. Judah Cemetery, Queens, USA - Bathurst Lawn Memorial Park, North York, Canada - Bathurst Lawn Memorial Park, North York, Canada

1900 Jewish population: 219,000.   - Museum of the

History of Polish Jews - Jewish Records Indexing Poland Town Page - Pinkas HaKehilot, Poland, Vol. 4 (1989), p. 1-125: "Warszawa"

Falenica is a part of Wawer,a forested Warsaw district  in the far SE corner of the city. Locatedon the right bank of the Vistula, until 1951 it was a separate village. Before WWII, Falenica wasa favorite location for summer cottages and houses. During World War II the Germans openeda Jewish ghetto. All inhabitants were transported to Treblinka in August 1942. Yizkor, [January 2013]

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WARSAW: [WARSZAWA , [Falenica, Radosc, Varshe, Warschau, Varshava, Varsavia, Varsovie,]Last Updated Sunday, 24 December 2017 04:54

JRI-Poland and JGS NY project to reconstruct the burial records. Warsaw Cemetery Recordsand Photographs. "WarsawCemetery Manager, Mr. Bolek Szenicer, like his father Pinkus before him, has been workingdiligently to reconstruct the Warsaw Cemetery records destroyed by the Nazis. After 20 yearsof work, more than 50,000 gravestones have been fully or partially indexed but another200,000 remain to be done. If you have visited the immense Warsaw cemetery and haveseen the jumble of stones and overgrowth, you can begin to appreciate the scale of theproject. At present there are more than 30,000 indices in the JRI-Poland database and moreare added each month." May 2012]

The Foundation of the Jewish Cemetery "Gesia" was established. Restoration of the preburialhouse and paving the courtyard by the gate was done. Source: US Commission [date?]

UPDATE:  photo . town photos and link to 1910 map. synagogue sketch . [August 2005] UPDATE: Cemetery photos. Cemetery photos. cemetery photos [January 2006]

history, map, sections, and photo

The Jewish Historical Institute Archives have about 4000 names; Warsaw cemetery directorBoleslaw Szenicer (Cmentarz Zydowski, ul. Okopowa 49/51, Warszawa, Poland) has over40,000 names in his database so far. He welcomes inquiries. The 4000 we have and the 40,000he has do NOT overlap; they are different sections of the cemetery. Source: Yale Reisner(Also see Poland) [date?]

JEWISH CEMETERY :

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-

Amid Drought, WWII Relics Are Being Discovered Under Poland's Vistula River . [Septm 2015]

- BRODNO: Jewish Headstones Used to Build Warsaw Park to Be Returned to HistoricJewish Cemetary sic [June 2016]

- [UPDATE] Brodno Jewish Cemetery Revisited [February 2017]

- Cmentarz Zydowski W Warszawie by Henryk Kroszczor and Henryk Zimler DS135.P62W2778 1983. The cemetery at 49 Okopowa Street was the only Jewish burial ground inWarsaw. It was established at the beginning of the 19th century, being then the second Jewishcemetery beside the one at Praga (the suburb of Warsaw on the other side of the Vistula)existing for some thirty years. This listing was drawn from the Chapter Short Life Sketches,wherein there is more information. As annotated in listing, there is Date of Birth-Date of Death, aword on occupation/life's work and S=Section R=Row. The cemetery at Okopowa Street, about30 ha, is designed to contain alleys, sections, and rows. There are over 100 sections. Beforethe outbreak of the war in 1939, about 150 thousand were buried. At the main alley in thedistant part of the cemetery, one finds barrows that were heaped up on the old sections fromwhich old tombstones and monuments were removed. This was necessary for lack of spaceand impossibility of increasing the area (such a situation occurred about 1915). A few namesare listed under Warsaw. Also: A partial cemetery list is available; contact Joel Reisner. It ismiraculous that among the ruins of bombed out Warsaw, where hundred's of thousands ofJewish lives were destroyed and 85% of Jewish records were burned in buildings razed to theground, that the big Warsaw Jewish Cemetery, "The Gesia", was spared. It still survives, thoughovergrown with trees and brush and still preserves the gravestones of approximately 250,000people. There are famous people buried there too like famous Yiddish writers I.L. Peretz, theactress Ida Kaminska and Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto. - We arrived at the cemetery having walked down Mordechai Anielewicz Street and enteredthe grounds at around 10:00 a.m. on a Friday morning. I was surprised to see that Boleg (Berl)Szenicer, the person in charge of the cemetery, sitting behind a rough wooden desk in a smallhouse is so young, maybe 40. With him was an elderly gentleman who comes to keep himcompany. Berl is slender, dark, with delicate features and brown eyes. One wants to feed him,strengthen him for the tremendous responsibility that he carries to care for all these graves inhostile surroundings. Last spring, 66 graves were desecrated and even as he sits across fromme I see behind him a great big plastered over odd gray shape adjoining the door behind him.He tells us that damaged wall is where the robbers blowtorched the locks of the door and brokeinto the next small room which contained a safe with some money and precious old silver ritualobjects in it which they stole. They also stole the computer on which he had begun to make adent in the huge job of recording all the graves and their locations. Fortunately, he had a backup disk at home so all of that was not lost. However he is now without a computer and it needsto be a lap top that he can take with him on his bicycle as he goes around to the gravestones todirectly record their information. It needs to be a lap-top also for him to be able to take it home

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WARSAW: [WARSZAWA , [Falenica, Radosc, Varshe, Warschau, Varshava, Varsavia, Varsovie,]Last Updated Sunday, 24 December 2017 04:54

with him with him and keep it safe from the next break in that is sure to come at this cemetery. Ilearned that the favorite break-in times for the anti-Jewish hooligans are Friday night late andSaturday so this devoted young man, Berl Szenicer spends his Fridays sitting in his little officelate into the night listening for trouble and stays there on Shabat. And the old man sitting withhim that morning told me he fears for Berl even though they have now hired a guard for themost dangerous times to be with him. Berl had grown up around the cemetery and came towork there when his father was ill since there was no one else to take care after his father died.Berl felt that he could not abandon the place he had grown up in and inherited his father's work.The Jewish community of Warsaw was so destroyed by WW2, and demoralized by pogromsand subsequent communist control that most who were able to emigrated. Consequently, nowthere may be only 1000 Jews remaining in Warsaw, 90% of them elderly. No one knows forsure about the numbers because Poland is not a place where Jews feel safe to be open andcounted. In any case, Berl Szenicer is one of few young vibrant people able to do the work ofmaintaining Jewish heritage there. Source: Sarah Moskovitz FAX: 310-454-4492 or other email. - Radosc burial list [Jan 2015] - Brodno burial list [Jan 2015]

- Okopowa burial list [Jan 2015]

- photos and history and a link to the cemetery plan. "...situated in Okopowa Street (formerGesia Street), founded in 1799..." [May 2002] - history [May 200?] - Return of matzevot to cemetery [Aug 2014] - Comprehensive story on Brodno cemetery matzevot in Warsaw [Oct 2014] - Source : Warsaw Will Return 1,000 Gravestones to Jewish Cemetery. THE LOOTED matzevotHAD BEEN USED TO BUILD A STRUCTURE IN A CITY PARK

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- Sefer Hahlat Olamia . (Book of Eternity place; Warsaw cemetery graves of Rabbis &wellknown merchants), by Yevin, Shemuel; Warsaw, 1882. 112p. (Hebrew); Note: Period:1794-1882. 334 tmsts. chronological. no index. Source: National and University Library,Jerusalem - Cmentarze Zydowskie w Warszawie: prezwodnik ilustrowany by Leon Przysuskier. 110,xxi p., (1) leaf of plates (folded); ill; 21 cm. call #DS135.p62 W3286 1992; Jewish cemeteries. - Cmentarze zydowskie w Warszawie (Jewish cemeteries in Warsaw) by H. Paszkiewicz, P.Paszkiewicz and M. Krajewska. Warsaw, 1992. 68 pages, 64 plates, illustrated, map, polish.93B4508. Notes: Chiefly tombstone photographs, names in footnotes, tombstones chiefly fromCemetery at Okopowa St. from 1807, cemetery history. source: National and University Library,Jerusalem     

- Cmentarz Powazkoski w Warszawie, 3191, exhibition catelog, 10/27/1997, "WaldorffJerzy, Czynska Zofia, Olszewska Barbar", title:,Zespot autorow,; Krajowa Agencja Wydawniczarsw;" Prasa-Ksiazka-Ruch";, 1984, 368p., Polish, 83-03-00758-0; Source: contact DanielDratwa. The books are among the collection at the Jewish Museum of Belgium. - The Jewish cemetery on Okopowa St. , Warsaw, by J. Jagielski. Warsaw, 1986. 1 foldedsheet, illustrated plan, polish text & English title and summary. 93L5. Notes: 203 names,1852-1983, alphabetical list of names including birth and death dates, professions index,cemetery history and plan. source: National and University Library, Jerusalem - A Tribe of Stones; Jewish cemeteries in Poland / photographs, text, tombstone rubbinhgsand selection of mottoes by Monika Krajewska; with an introduction by Rafael Scharf.; 242 p;chiefly ill.; 33 cm. call # BM 337 .K73 1993. - Time of stones by M. Krajewska. Warsaw, 1983. 165 pages of illustrations, plates.2-88B2760. Notes: Tombstone photograph album. non-alphabetical index of places, 165tombstone photographs (some readable names), English translation of Czas Kameni S2-84B1519. German translation 1982:S2-84B1520. Source: National and University Library,Jerusalem - Shonberg Family Aid Society (New York, N.Y.) Records, 1916-1969. Description: .3 linearft. Notes: Mutual aid society organized in 1912 and incorporated in 1915 by Shonberg(Shoenberg) family immigrants from the Warsaw, Poland area. Membership is open toShonberg direct descendents and spouses. ...YIVO collections are in Yiddish, Russian, Polish,English, Hebrew, and other European and non-European languages. Location: YIVOInstitute for Jewish Research, New York, NY. Control No.: NXYH90-A47 [December 2000] - Gruber, Ruth Ellen. Jewish Heritage Travel A Guide to East-Central Europe . New York:John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1992. p. 25, 27-33; Synogogue 30 - Warszawa (Warsaw), ulica Okopowa 49/51. Established 1806. About 150,000tombstones. Tombs of the writers: I. Perec, An-ski, D. Nomberg; historians: S. Askenazy, M.

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Balaban; politicians: F. Perl, B. Grosser, A. Czerniakow; actress Esther Rachel Kaminska;publishers: S. Orgelbrand, J. Mortkowicz; creator of Esperanto, L. Zamenhof; Rabbis B. Meiselsand Ch. Solowiejczyk; ohel of tzaddiks from Warka, Mszczonow, Modrzyce, Radzymin; tombsof insurgents of 1863; mass graves of soldiers who fell in 1939; tombs of Warsaw Ghettofighters; memorial to Janusz Korczak. [source?]

By  Stephanie Butnick |August 15, 2014 2:21 PM|  Comments: 6

Warsaw's Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery( Wikimedia )

The city of Warsaw has announced plans to recover 1,000 gravestones, or matzevot, that weretaken from the city's Jewish cemetery and used to build a structure in a city park. Thegravestones, JTA reports, are "currently part of a pergola and stairs at a park in Warsaw's Praga district." The city plansto return the matzevotto the Jewish cemetery. 

The city's change of heart was the result of months of campaigning by an organization calledFrom the Depths, whose  Matzeva Project locates and restores misused Jewish gravestonesacross Poland. 

The practice of removing Jewish gravestones from cemeteries and using them for otherpurposes was actually quite common in Poland since the 1940s. As Stefan Lorenzutti  wrote inTablet in 2013, "‘Quarried'" from cemeteries during World War II (by the Nazis), the decadesthat followed (by Poles), and even up until the present day, matzevothad been and continue to be used in any instance in which ordinary stone might normally,mundanely, and practically suffice." (A controversialnew Polish film, Aftermath, tells the story of a modern-day Pole who becomes fixated on recovering the matzevot he findsthroughout his village, whose project-and the truths he uncovers-creates an uproar in his sleepyPolish town.) 

Photographer Łukasz Baksik spent three years  documenting "looted and appropriated"

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gravestones across Poland; the photographs wound up becoming a book called Matzevot for Everyday Use. You can see a slideshowof some of the photos here, the images are nothing short of haunting.As Lorenzutti wrote of the collection,

The matzevot Baksik photographed had been repurposed (a tricky verb in this context) aspaving stones for courtyards and passageways, or else to patch crumbling walls and curbstonesin need of reinforcement. They had been shaped into querns and grindstones; had been used toconstruct a cowshed, a pergola in a city park, a sandbox for children; had ended up as"recyclable" tablets for new Catholic gravestones-the Jewish gravestone was simply carved intoagain, like a palimpsest-and as a path for monks who, Baksik relates, "had become used towalking on a paved path, and not through the mud."  Perhaps the pergola Baksikphotographed is the one whose matzevotare now being returned to where they belong. [August 2014]

Photos courtesy of  Deborah Friedman , July 2011

{gallery}EastEurope/Poland/Warsaw{/gallery}

[UPDATE] Vandals attack Okopowa Street Cemetery [February 2015]

Photo of main gate to Brodno Jewish Cemetery courtesy Marla Osborne [May 2015]

{gallery}EastEurope/Poland/Warsaw/Brodno{/gallery}

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[UPDATE} Wikipedia article on Brodno Cemetery [May 2015]

[UPDATE] Photographs of Piles of Matzevot in Brodno Cemetery [January 2016]

[UPDATE] Photos by Charles Burns of Okopowa Cemetery [April 2016]

[UPDATE] A Visit to the Andielewicz Street Cemetery [Octobere 2016]

[UPDATE] Polish Government donates 100 million zloty (28 million dollars) for preservation ofOkopowa Cemetery [December 2017]

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