Obj. ID: 50307
Jewish Funerary Art Jewish cemetery in Gorlice, Poland
According to ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, the Jewish cemetery in Gorlice is located about 800 metres northwest of the market square, on Stróżowska Street. The cemetery covers an irregularly shaped plot of land of 13,113 square metres and is located on a steep hillside. In the interwar period, the cemetery was fenced with a brick wall. There were at least a few hundred tombstones in the cemetery, as well as an ohel for the great rabbis. During World War II, people who were killed by the Germans in various parts of Gorlice were buried in the cemetery. The Germans used the cemetery to carry out executions and many Jews, Poles, and Roma were killed there. After liberation, members of the Poviat Jewish Committee in Gorlice cleaned and secured the cemetery and renovated some of the recovered tombstones. They moreover exhumed the bodies of Jews who were killed in the Gorlice region and reburied them in a mass grave in the cemetery. Monuments dedicated to the memory of Holocaust victims were erected in the cemetery.
In the mid-1990’s, the cemetery was cleaned and fenced with a steel fence. From the side of Stróżowska Street, a small lapidary was built using a few dozen tombstones. On October 25, 1995, a handover ceremony of the restored cemetery took place. The cemetery is owned by the Jewish Community in Kraków.
The site has a metal fence about 1.7 meters in height. In front of the gate from Stróżowska Street there is a newly built lapidarium in the shape of a Star of David. A second, smaller lapidarium with fragments of tombstones is located behind the gate at Stróżowska Street, inside the cemetery.
There are about 250 gravestones. Only a few tombstones are undamaged and mark the original burial place.
There is an ohel, which was restored in 2014–2015. It contains stone markers to the following Baruch Halberstam - fifth son of Chaim Halberstam, founder of the Hasidic dynasty in Nowy Sącz, head of the rabbinical court in Rudnik and Gorlice, died on 1 Adar 5666 (February 26, 1906); Zvi Hirssh son of Baruch Halberstam – rabbi, head of the rabbinical court in Rudnik, died on 15 Tammuz, 5678 (July 24, 1918), Pinchas son of Yehoshua Eleazar - descendant of Pinchas from Korets and tzadik from Kosov, dayan, died on 25 Shvat, 5661 (February 14, 1901).
The main gate is on 68, Stróżowska Street. A second gate at the site leads straight to the ohel and is located next to the house at 82, Stróżowska Street. Passing the house and next to the hedge, there is a carabiner-locked gate. Follow the path leading from the gate along the house fences. At the end, there is an open gate to the cemetery. The gate at the ohel is open all the time.
