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Blonie Jewish Cemetery

Cemetery Information

Country
Poland
Region
Masovian Voivodeship
District
Warsaw West
Settlement
Błonie
Site address
The cemetery is situated at the northern end of Polna street and it’s adjacent to 57 Polna Street.
GPS coordinates
52.2067783, 20.6179798
Perimeter length
239 meters
Is the cemetery demolished
no
Type and height of existing fence
There is an iron fence (2m high), with a concrete and iron gate. The fence was erected by the Jewish community of Warsaw and ESJF in 2017.
Preservation condition
Fenced and protected Jewish cemetery
General site condition
The Jewish cemetery of Błonie is situated on the northern rural outskirts of the town. The cemetery area adjoins private residential houses from the south and north, Polna street from the east and an agricultural field from the west. The area is neglected and overgrown with tall wild grass. Several fragments of tombstones have been preserved, however they are hard to locate in the dense undergrowth. The cemetery is fenced and marked as a Jewish cemetery, but there is no access information.
Number of existing gravestones
The number of tombstones is approximate; the field team were unable to gain access to the cemetery area.
Date of oldest tombstone
N/A
Date of newest tombstone
N/A
Urgency of erecting a fence
Low
Land ownership
Property of local community
Preserved construction on site
No
Drone surveys
No

Historical overview

While the first records of Jewish presence in Błonie date to the 15th century, it was the lifting of the settlement ban in 1862 that truly allowed the development of the Jewish community. In 1921, 1,262 Jews lived in the town (23.6% of the total population), most of whom were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto in February 1941 and were murdered a year later in Treblinka.

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 matzevot. 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 matzevot, 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).

Blonie Jewish Cemetery
Blonie Jewish Cemetery
Blonie Jewish Cemetery
Blonie Jewish Cemetery
Blonie Jewish Cemetery
Blonie Jewish Cemetery
Blonie Jewish Cemetery
Blonie Jewish Cemetery
Blonie Jewish Cemetery
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