Sterdyn Jewish Cemetery

The Jewish cemetery of Sterdyń was likely established during the second half of the 19th century. It was located approximately 1.5 kilometers southeast of the market square and covered an area of approximately 0.6 hectares. The history of the cemetery during the Second World War is unknown. Currently, the area is covered with forestry. In the cemetery, there are mass graves of the victims of executions by the Germans. There are no traces of any tombstone. The cemetery is unfenced and its boundaries are invisible. At the edge of the cemetery there is a concrete monument with the Star of David without any inscriptions.

Although its history goes back to the Middle Ages, Sterdyń likely obtained town rights in 1737. Sterdyń functioned as a town until the beginning of the 19th century and then from 1869 it served as a private village owned by the Kiszka, Ossoliński, and Krasiński families. The founding of the Jewish settlement in Sterdyń is unknown. In the 1864 census, there were 3,002 inhabitants of the settlement, including about 200 Jews (6.7%) and about 200 Uniates.

In 1870, a wooden synagogue was built but it burned down in 1915. At the beginning of the 20th century, the number of Jewish residents increased significantly. In 1941, there was a ghetto in the town. In 1942, about 1,000 people were gathered there, including Soviet war prisoners. On September 23, 1942, about 300–400 people were murdered on the ghetto’s grounds. The remaining inhabitants were transported to the extermination camp at Treblinka. In February 1943, the Germans ambushed local Poles who supported hiding Jews in town and killed eleven of them.