Millions of Jews lived in Poland and millions are buried here. Auschwitz-Berkenau can be considered the largest Jewish cemetery in the world. Over a million Jews were killed there. This number is so large it defies comprehension. After my travels of the last two days, however, I have seen many other places were Jews are buried. In my next few posts, I will try to categorize and describe them.

The first kind, and surely the least disturbing, is the intact but neglected cemetery. We visited such a cemetery yesterday in the city of Lodz. Before the war, Lodz was the center of textile manufacturing in Poland, and Jews were major contributors to that economy. The Jewish population numbered 233,000. The Jewish cemetery of Lodz contains some 180,000 marked graves, making it the largest intact Jewish cemetery in Europe. (see http://www.vosizneias.com/40073/2009/10/20/lodz-poland-lodz-jewish-cemetery-with-180000-graves-is-the-biggest-in-europe/)

There is good news and bad news about this cemetery. The main good news is that it exists at all and is relatively intact. The Nazis destroyed many cemeteries during the war and,  after the war, Polish people destroyed others. It also has a guard and a fence around it, protecting it for the future. We got there at about 8:45 and had to wait till 9:00 till it opened. The Polish government has designated it a protected site and is making efforts to restore it. While we were there, we saw workers trying to clear paths and prune away brush to expose the headstones.

The graves themselves attest to the wealth and diversity of this Jewish community in the pre-war period. Here is the amazing and gaudy memorial to the wealthy industrialist, Marcus Silberstein:

Not to be outdone, here is Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznanski’s, Lodz’s chief benefactor:

Torah scholars and others who worked to support the community:

Some of the people buried here died during the period of the Lodz Ghetto period. I believe this marker was set up after the war, meaning that there are a few which are, or at least were, being attended to.

The bad news, however, is that there is no one to take care of individual graves. Because there are few people alive who are connected to any of the graves here. Only about 800 people from Lodz survived the war. Any survivor from Lodz doesn’t live there anymore, and there’s even less chance their offspring do. It is a relic of a thriving community that is no more.

The saddest aspect of the cemetery for me was the empty house where the community performed the taharah (ritual washing of the body) before burial. The washing table still stands. The plaque of the person who donated money for the house still appears.

However, as sad as this sight is, the other resting places of Poland’s Jews are even sadder. At least most of the people buried here died natural deaths.  At least is is recognizable as a cemetery. The same is not true for the other kinds of places I visited the last two days where Poland’s Jews are buried.