Jewish Cemetery, Białystok
The Jewish Cemetery in Wschodnia street, Białystok (Podlaskie Voivodeship, Poland) was created around 1890, after the closure of the old cemetery on Kalinowski Street. The Jewish cemetery is a listed heritage monument.
This is the only surviving Jewish cemetery in Białystok and one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Poland. The brick boundary wall encloses an area of 12.5 hectares, which contains around 6,000 Matzevah - the oldest of which dates to the year 1876. The matzevah are made of marble, granite, limestone, and sandstone. There are inscriptions in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, and German.
There are two buildings on the cemetery grounds: the Tahara house and the house of the warden and gravedigger. The last burial took place in 1969. On 17 July 1973, the cemetery was definitively closed.
There is a monument in the cemetery commemorating around 90 Jews who lost their lives in a pogrom undertaken by the Russians in 1906, which was unveiled before the Second World War. The names of the victims in this pogrom are carved on black stone.
Notable burials[]
- Chaim Herz Halpern (d. 1919), Rabbi
External links[]
Media related to Jewish cemetery in Białystok (Wschodnia street) at Wikimedia Commons
- Jewish cemeteries in Poland
- Jews and Judaism in Białystok
- Buildings and structures in Białystok
- Objects of cultural heritage in Poland
- Former cemeteries
- 1890s architecture