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Krasnik New Jewish Cemetery

Cemetery Information

Country
Poland
Region
Lublin Voivodeship
District
Kraśnik
Settlement
Kraśnik
Site address
The cemetery is located at the intersection of Szewska and Dolna streets.
GPS coordinates
50.9153, 22.22092
Perimeter length
940 metres
Is the cemetery demolished
yes
Type and height of existing fence
No fence. The remains of an old concrete wall have been preserved. However the wall is destroyed in many places.
Preservation condition
Demolished Jewish cemetery that has not been built over
General site condition
It is a demolished Jewish Cemetery, overgrown with dense bushes. Litter was found at the site. The mass grave has been restored. Many pieces of matzevot have survived, however none of them were preserved in situ. Union of Jewish Religious Communities. The area around the mass grave is fenced with a small metal fence, about 0.5m high.
Number of existing gravestones
350 fragments of matzevot are stored near the mass grave.
Date of oldest tombstone
N/A
Date of newest tombstone
N/A
Urgency of erecting a fence
High
Land ownership
Other
Preserved construction on site
No
Drone surveys
Yes

Historical overview

The third cemetery in Kraśnik was established in the first quarter of the 19th century, it is situated about 500 meters south of the market square, outside of the town borders and among fields. Its area was enlarged twice to the south. In 1893, it obtained the final area of 1.67 hectares. In some documents, the area of the last enlargement is called the new cemetery and in others it is referred to as the fourth cemetery.The cemetery had a wooden fence and a funeral house stood on its west side.

At the beginning of World War II, the cemetery was devastated. The funeral house and fence were demolished and the matzevot were taken away for construction purposes. Currently, there are numerous partial tombstones with only their lower half remaining. During the war, the Germans carried out mass executions of around 1500 people in the newest part of the cemetery. The victims were buried in mass graves.

After the war, the Jews refenced the cemetery with a picket fence made of concrete segments, a significant part of which survives to this day. They brought tombstones retrieved from the town and the surrounding area. In 1946, they exhumed the bodies buried outside the cemetery in the Kraśnik district and buried the corpses in mass graves located in the newest part of the cemetery, another exhumation was carried out in 1948. The area of mass graves from the war and exhumation periods was secured with concrete slabs and a monument was erected there. The cemetery was renovated in 2018. After the Jewish population left Kraśnik, some tombstones were stolen again.

Nowadays there are remains of several hundred sandstone tombstones, the oldest one dating from 1841, and several other concrete ones in the cemetery. The area is covered with young, mainly self-seeded trees and dense shrubs.

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