Grubisno Polje Jewish Cemetery
Cemetery Information
Historical overview
Grubišno Polje is a small town in Bjelovar-Bilogora County, about 56.7 miles east of Zagreb. The area was under Turkish rule in the 16th century and, after the departure of the Turks in the 17th century, the place was uninhabited for some time. The first families to resettle in Grubišno Polje arrived in 1698, coming from such places as Lika, Bosnia, the Croatian Littoral, and Istria. The settlement is marked on a map of the first military survey in 1774 as “Dorf Grubisno Polie.” At the end of the 19th century more than 50 Czech and Hungarian families settled in the town. In 1857, Grubišno Polje had 970 inhabitants and, by 1910, had 2,229 inhabitants. In 1910 the population of the village was 36% Serbian, 28% Croatian, 17% Hungarian, and 13% Czech. Grubišno Polje also had a Jewish community that numbered 70 people in 1921, 63 in 1931, and 45 in 1941. During World War II, Croatian fascists arranged for and oversaw the deportation of a small number of Jews to concentration camps. After the war, there were no more Jews in Grubišno Polje. In 2011, this small town had a population of 2,917 people.
The Grubišno Polje Jewish cemetery was in use in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now, however, the cemetery is almost totally destroyed. Only the door at the entrance displaying the Star of David remains and is the sole reminder that it is a Jewish cemetery.