Poland: Bialystok cemetery wall planned

Here's information on the Wschodnia Street Cemetery, also called the Bagnowka Cemetery. This is, according to Mark Halpern, coordinator of the BialyGen Special Interest Group, the only Jewish cemetery in Bialystok that still has visible gravestones.

A Jewish woman living in the city, Lucja (Lucy) Lisowska, is dedicated to ensuring the security, maintenance and restoration of the extensive cemetery, which has no fences.

Through her work and with the help of the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland and Jewish religious representatives, the Bialystok municipality has agreed to build a wall to separate the Jewish and adjacent Catholic cemeteries. Work will begin in April.

According to Halpern, Lisowska also helped coordinate the March 2007 visit of 180 Israeli soldiers organized by Yad LeZehava Holocaust Research Institute in Kedumim. They cleared debris and helped document the cemetery. Eventually, that work will be included in JewishGen's Jewish Online World Burial Registry.

To read more about this, click here.

Other Bialystok cemetery links are here, here and here.