In a previous post, I tried to categorize the types of Jewish burial places I encountered in Poland. I attempted to list them in order from intact cemeteries, an identifiable marker for an named individual most of whom died of natural causes, to death camps, where hundreds of thousands of people, or, in the case of Auschwitz, millions, were murdered and no sign remains of their bodies. (http://zambrow.blogspot.co.il/2015/08/somewhat-and-minimally-cemeteries.html)

I have described cemeteries that were desecrated by the Nazis or by Poles after the war, but still are identifiable in some respect as Jewish cemeteries. However, when we arrived in the two Western Polish towns of Konin and Slupca, where my wife’s family hails from, we encountered a different reality. The Jewish cemetery of these towns had been erased. Only the barest, and displaced, remnants remained.

We began our day with our fearless guide, Jakob Lysiak (about whom much more later), at the local museum in the town of Konin. According to the web site Vitual Shtetl, an invaluable source of information about pre-war Jewry, there were about 3,000 Jews living in Konin before the war. (http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/article/konin/5,history/) At the museum, there was a picture of the Jewish cemetery as it once existed:

We also found at the museum other evidence of the community. The archivist willingly showed us a room dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews of Konin. The museum had a photograph of the Konin synagogues, located side by side, as well as a blueprint of one of the buildings:

(top): photograph of the exterior of the synagogue of Konin

blueprint of synagogue of Konin

The synagogue buildings, one of which had been used as a library, still exist, but stand empty:

A portion of the Torah from the book of Genesis that deals with Jacob’s travails  while living with his father in law Laban

But where was the cemetery? It doesn’t exist. The Nazis made tried to make sure no trace of it remained. In 1939, before the Nazis had even killed any of the Jews of Konin, they ploughed under its Jewish cemetery. (http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/article/konin/5,history/)

I say tried, because we did encounter remnants of the cemetery at the museum. Outside, the museum had preserved a number of matzevas (gravestones) from the cemetery, resting up against the brick wall the ringed the museum. (Interestingly, the Polish people also refer to the Jewish gravestones as “matzevas”.) The cemetery is no more but a few of the gravestones survived.

remnants of the Jewish cemetery at the museum in Konin.

I pointed out to the museum head that some of the gravestones were upside down. She said she knew that and would try to right them

In a bitter twist of irony, the gravestones of some of the women refer to them as “important and modest” (important enough to have her gravestone survive, but not important enough to have it disconnected from where she rests).  This one, the marker of a woman named Chana Bela Beadyer (as best I can make out), reads, “here lies an important and modest woman, a woman of valor, a fearer of God, a giver of charity”:

In some cases, the museum had undertaken to translate the marker into Polish and place the translation on a sign next to the stone. This one indicated that a women named Rivka Levinski had died in 1924:

This gravestone. in remarkable condition, attested to a woman named Necha Denzinger, the daughter of Israel Dov and the wife of Yosef, who died after the Sabbath and was buried on Sunday, the 28th day of the month of Adar Bet (Adar II), in 1916 (the year is calculated by adding the numerical value of the two letters to 1840, which is the value of the first two letters):

We then travelled to the smaller town of Slupca. There too the Nazis had destroyed the Jewish cemetery, using the tombstones to build earthworks and harden the roads. (http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/article/slupca/12,cemeteries/1967,/) A marker had been placed at the site of the cemetery indicating what the area once was:

All around were trees and shrubs. It seemed that nothing remained of the cemetery. Then, near the marker, we found a single broken tombstone:

As in Konin, the local museum had preserved some of the other tombstones, which lay around the courtyard of the museum:

The museum also had preserved two objects, a menorah and a fish plate, which, along with the tombstones, and an abandoned synagogue, are all that remain of the Jews of Slupca:

There are two lines from the liturgy of the holiday of Tisha B’av (the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av), commemorating the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem as well as other tragic events in Jewish history, that ran through my mind during my time in Poland. One is from a poem recited on this holiday, “Oy, Me Haya Lanu,” meaning “woe, what is it we once, but no longer, have.” The other is from the Book of Lamentations, read on the evening of Tisha B’av: “Over these I weep” (Lam. 1:16). This was the quote on the top of Necha Denzinger’s dislocated tombstone. The continuation of this section of Lamentations seems especially appropriate to describe the cemeteries, and meager remains, of the Jews of Konin and Slupca:

. . . my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed. . . . Oh God, see you distressed I am! I am tormented within, my heart is disturbed, for I have been most rebellious. Outside, the sword bereaves, inside there is only death.