Obj. ID: 50520
Jewish Funerary Art  Jewish cemetery in Błonie, Poland

According to ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, the cemetery is located about 1.2 km north of the market square, at Polna Street, and covers a geodetic plot no. 4.0008.21 shaped like a square with an area of 0.34 hectares. The cemetery’s establishment date is unknown, though it was likely established in the second half of the 19th century, simultaneous to the development of the Jewish settlement in Błonie.
In the summer of 1940, a dozen or so Jewish soldiers from the Polish Army, who were killed during the September campaign, were exhumed from field graves and buried in the cemetery.

The degradation of the cemetery likely began during World War II. In 1947, the Municipal Board of Błonie took the cemetery gate. In 1948, the Central Committee of Jews in Poland and the Commune Cooperative “Samopomoc Chłopska” in Błonie negotiated a transfer of rights to manage the square where the synagogue was located in exchange for fencing the cemetery, but the agreement was not concluded. In the following decades, the cemetery was gradually destroyed. In 2011, there were about 35 remaining tombstones in the cemetery.

In the spring of 2013, an unknown perpetrator smashed all the standing tombstones. Destroyed tombstones were secured in the police warehouse. In October 2013, plaques with information about the cemetery and the graves of soldiers killed in September 1939 were placed on the gateway.

Currently, there are single tombstones, and a dozen concrete and sandstone structural elements of damaged tombstones in the cemetery. The concrete pillars of the gate have been preserved. In 2016, the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF), in cooperation with the Jewish Community in Warsaw, built a new fence.

The owner of the cemetery is the Jewish Community in Warsaw, and it is listed in the Register of Immovable Monuments of the Masovian Voivodeship (entry No. 1386, July 26, 1989).

There is an iron fence (2 m high), with a concrete and iron gate. The fence was erected by the Jewish community of Warsaw and ESJF in 2017.