Obj. ID: 13777
Funerary Art New Jewish cemetery in Biłgoraj, Poland
According to ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, the third Jewish cemetery in Biłgoraj was established around 1800 and is located 1.5 km south of the market square, outside the city limits, among fields. It was gradually expanded, and, in the interwar period, covered a plot of land shaped like an irregular polygon with an area of approximately 2.44 hectares (ha). It was fenced with a stone wall and overgrown with trees. There was moreover an ohel in the cemetery. During World War II, the cemetery was destroyed. Most of the tombstones were removed and taken away, trees were cut down, and the fence was pulled down. The Germans carried out mass executions in the cemetery and buried the bodies in mass graves. In 1948, a group of Jews came to Biłgoraj and exhumed the bodies of victims from around the town and the surrounding area and buried them in mass graves in the cemetery. None of the mass graves were marked and have not been located. Authorities later divided a large part of the cemetery into separate plots, and the remaining tombstones were removed. Among other things, a factory producing construction material was built on the land. In 1985–1986, part of the cemetery with an area of 0.26 ha was fenced, a monument dedicated to Holocaust victims and a wall-lapidarium with tombstones were erected, and about a dozen found tombstones were placed in the ground. In 2015, another Holocaust memorial was erected, called the “Wall of Remembrance.” Tombstones found in the city and the surrounding area are still brought and stored in the fenced area. There are currently over 200 tombstones and parts of tombstones in the cemetery, which are mostly made of limestone and white sandstone, and the oldest of which dates to 1826.
