However, what I found was very sad and disturbing. The place looked more like a park than a cemetery. It was overgrown, with trees and shrubs growing all about.

There was garbage strewn around, empty bottles, cups beer cans, wrappers.

Some people had recently had a campfire next to some of the markers and probably used the gravestones to sit on.

Most of the gravestones either lay on the ground or were broken, or both.

This is the gravestone that was in the best condition:

I was disgusted by the site, but I tried my best to keep in mind that this is what happens to any object that belongs to a community when that community no longer exists. First of all, the place exists, which cannot be said for other Jewish cemeteries. My guide also explained that no efforts were made by the communist government of Poland, from after the war until 1991, to preserve artifacts of any national community because it ran counter to the communist narrative that denied the particularity of groups within Poland. For example, you will not find any memorials to Jews that were erected during the communist era that refer to Jews as Jews, only as Polish people of Jewish origin. Museums were not allowed to have a separate room devoted to the Jews of Poland. This holds true for the communist-era museum at Auschwitz as well as individual memorials at various sites. Thus, many Jewish cemeteries not destroyed by the Nazis were damaged or destroyed by Poles during the post-war era as the government did nothing and no one was around to protect them. In fact, the communists had a policy of erasing the memory of non Polish sites (Jewish as well as sites of former German Poles who were deported from Poland to Germany after the war). Protecting Jewish sites during the communist era was a local decision, rather than, as now, national policy. Of course, it is clear that the local Zembrovers of today treat this place as nothing more than a hang out (it didn’t look like there was that much to do in Zambrow) than a place of historical import.

I wanted to put a stone on one of the gravestones, but I could not even find one among the brush. I had to walk back to the entrance and then back to the gravestone to at least leave a sign that someone had been there to pay their respects.

Can something be done to restore the dignity of this site? Is there a will, and, just as importantly, the means to do so? With all the needs of the Jewish community, in Israel, in America, and around the world, is it even worthwhile for Jews to put their resources into restoring the legacy of Polish Jewry as opposed to the needs of living Jews?

I could not even shed tears as I left the cemetery for the city center look for where my grandfather grew up. I felt sad, depressed and upset, and all together numb.