Lomza was an important Jewish town in Poland before the war. Jews constituted about half of the population of about 25,000. (see the extensive article at http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/article/lomza/5,history/?action=view)

The town had a magnificent synagogue as well as a famous Yeshiva at which my Zaidy (grandfather) studied for several years.

It was because of this family connection that we began our travels that day in Lomza.

As usual, our first stop was the cemetery. The cemetery was located on a hill, as, I discovered, were most Jewish (and perhaps non Jewish) cemeteries in Poland. The headstones were by and large intact. But it was strange because they were scattered about, seemingly at random. Given the size of the Jewish community, there must have been many more before the war. There was no fence around it nor any sign or notice that we were in a cemetery, let alone a Jewish one. The headstones were worn and the words on them barely discernible.

This was a lonely cemetery overlooking a valley below. There were no smaller stones on top of the tombstones, a sign that that no one visits this cemetery any more. It was a reminder, but a meager one, of what was once a vital Jewish community.

The Synagogue was gone as was the Yeshiva. There was a small and ugly sign, typical of the Soviet-era style, that indicated in Polish where the synagogue once stood. (Of course, any sign is better than no sign at all.)

There was a small regional museum dedicated to the history of the town. At the entrance of the museum were these strange statuettes of significant people and places in the town’s history, including an image of a Jew as well as the synagogue.

Inside the museum, there were some photographs of the prewar Jewish life: some people, the market, and the Jewish quarter.

Next to the museum was a gallery that had other pictures from Lomza’s past. One of them was a scene of the market.

According to my research, the Nazis created a ghetto at Lomza. Many of these Jews were the sent to the ghetto at Zambrow. From there they as well of the Jews of Zambrow met their ultimate end in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. But not all. Some of the Jews of Lomza were killed before the rest joined the Jews of Zambrow. And there was a photograph in the gallery that showed this, a photograph that it will be difficult for me to forget.

After addressing the different types of cemeteries I encountered in Poland, I will turn, and painfully so, to another type of place were many Jews of Poland are buried: mass murder sites.