Obj. ID: 50232
Jewish Funerary Art Jewish cemetery in Trzebinia, Poland
According to ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, the Trzebinia Jewish cemetery is located about 350 metres south of the market square, on the west side of Słowackiego Street, and covers a plot of land shaped like an elongated rectangle with an area of approximately 0.45 hectares. The cemetery was established in 1815. In the following years, local rabbis and tzadiks – Mosze Jona Lewi (died 1843), Izrael Kluger and Chaim Kluger (died 1869), and Awraham Lewi (died 1895) – were buried in the cemetery. An ohel was built over their graves. In the interwar period, the cemetery was fenced and there was a funeral house at the entrance. The cemetery was in use until World War II. People who died and were killed in the forced labour camp in Trzebionka were buried there. During the war, the cemetery was devastated and continued to degrade in the following decades. From 1945 until at least the end of 1946, the Jewish Committee in Trzebinia looked after the cemetery. On February 14, 1946, a monument was erected over the mass grave of the Holocaust victims. In the list of Jewish cemeteries compiled by the Office for Religious Affairs in 1981, in the case of Trzebinia, it was stated: “The stone fence is destroyed in 50%. Tombstones are overturned. The area is overgrown with bushes.” Between the 1980s and 1990s, cleaning work was carried out in the cemetery at the initiative of the Landsmanshaft of Trzebinia Jews.
There are around 600 gravestones (the list of tombstones is available at https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/krakow/chrzanow_tymbinia/Trzeb_Cemetery.htm). There is a visible division into men's, women's and children's quarters. On the left side of the entrance there is the women's quarter. On the right, male, part of it is the area in which the rabbis were buried. The children's quarters are the farthest from the entrance. The ohel was rebuilt in 1990. In the southern part of the cemetery, the foundation of the demolished funeral house is preserved. The area is fenced with a stone wall 1.5 m high. The ownership status of the cemetery is unclear. The cemetery is listed in the Municipal and Provincial Register of Monuments and the Register of Immovable Monuments of the Małopolskie Voivodeship.
