Bialobrzegi New Jewish Cemetery

Jewish settlement in Białobrzegi started developing by the second half of the 18th century. In 1921, 1,418 Jews lived in the town (58.6% of the entire population). Most of them were murdered by the Germans in the fall of 1942 at Treblinka.

The cemetery is located in the southwestern part of the town, at Rzemieślnicza Street. It is shaped like a rectangle. Originally, the cemetery was located outside the built-up area of town, on the forest’s edge. In 1857, the Jews of Białobrzegi became independent of the synagogue supervision in Przytyk, where they had before buried their dead. At that time, they owned a plot of land intended for a cemetery. The cemetery was established most likely four years later, after the creation of independent synagogue supervision in Białobrzegi. At the beginning of the 20th century, the cemetery was fenced.

During World War II, the bodies of the Holocaust victims were buried in the cemetery, including about 120-200 people killed in the fall of 1942 during the deportation to Treblinka. At the end of the war, the Germans ordered the bodies buried in a mass grave to be burned and the devastation of the cemetery began. The destruction continued in the following decades. Part of the cemetery’s area was probably developed with buildings. As a result of the destruction, all above-ground traces of the cemetery vanished.

In 2007, members of the Jewish Nationwide Youth Organization collected and buried the bones scattered on the surface of the cemetery. In 2015, the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, thanks to Morris Goldfarb and Arlene Goldfarb from New York and the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, fenced the cemetery with a concrete wall. In 2018, the Foundation placed a plaque on the gate commemorating the local Jewish community. The owner of the cemetery is the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage. The facility is listed in the Provincial Register of Monuments.