Obj. ID: 23488
Jewish Funerary Art Jewish cemetery in Żelechów, Poland
According to ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, the new Jewish cemetery in Żelechów is located approximately 470 metres southwest of the town square, on a rise between Reymonta, Brzóski, Bema, and Chłopickiego Streets. It occupies a plot with an acreage of 2.1315 hectares (ha). The cemetery was founded around 1802. In the following decades it was expanded. There was a funeral house beside the entrance gate. During World War II, people who died or were killed in the ghetto were buried in the cemetery. The Germans also used the site carried for carrying out executions. In 1942, it was the site of a so-called black wedding which, according to Jewish folklore, was meant to stop the spread of typhoid fever in the ghetto. The cemetery was devasted during the war. Presumably, some of the last people to be buried at the cemetery were Salomon Epner and Perla Fajgezucht, killed in Żelechów in the spring of 1945. Bodies of people killed during the war and initially buried elsewhere were exhumed and reburied in the cemetery.
In the following decades, the cemetery fell into further disrepair. In 1960-1964, a plot of 1.23 ha was fenced. In 1964 the Minister for Local Economy signed a by-law commencing the closure of the cemetery, so the area could be used for other purposes. In 1980 the local government planned to use part of the cemetery for residential buildings. There was a gas pumping station in the northern corner of the cemetery. In 2014, the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage, along with Rabbi Chaim Hopstein and Moses Hirschler, erected a new fence and installed an information plaque. There are approximately 150 tombstones in the cemetery, including the 2015 tombstones of the tzadiks Aharon ha-Kohen and Arie Hofstein. There are plans to build an ohel. There is no information about the cemetery’s ownership status. The cemetery is listed in the voivodeship register of immovable monuments.
There is an iron mesh fence on posts, 2 m high with a block gate. The fence was installed by FODZ in 2014.
There are two ohallim: one is a block building over the likely burial places of local tzaddikim Aron Jechiel from the Kozienice dynasty (died in 1941) and Rabbi Aron ha-Kohen (over which a previous ohel used to be). The second one is a wooden roof on posts, in which two old stones from the local cemetery are standing: one of Sheindel Freida Rabinowicz, wife of tzaddik Yaakov Yitzhak from Przysucha, the second is unknown.
There are about 70 intact gravestones and some fragments. On the slope facing Reymonta Street, there are sandstone tombstones that have survived in good condition and with legible inscriptions.
