There are no surviving documents which would point to any regulations restricting the settlement of Jews in the urban centre. Nonetheless, it was not until the early 18th century that a modern Jewish community developed in Bobrowniki. In 1720, its erstwhile owner Józef Wandalin Mniszech issued a permit officially allowing Jews to settle in the town. An organised religious community was formed towards the end of the 18th century. In 1787, it had 297 members, which accounted for 33% of the total population.

The Description

It was probably in the late 18th century or the early 19th century that the local Jewish cemetery was established. It was located 800 meters to the west of the Market Square, outside the developed urban area, in Dęblińska Street. It was the burial site of the local community and of the Jews of Dęblin. The cemetery was used until World War II. In May 1942, the Jews from Bobrowniki were driven by the Germans to the ghetto in Dęblin. Ca. 300 people were murdered on the spot; their bodies were buried in mass graves in the cemetery.

The Germans also caused significant damage to the cemetery itself. They felled the trees growing at the site and pulled out tombstones – they were used to build pavements around the Market Square and to pave the streets near today’s bus station in Dęblin. After the war, the cemetery continued to fall into decline. It was not until the 1980s that descendants of Dęblin Jews carried out first cleaning works at the site. A hedge was planted around the cemetery and commemorative plaques were placed at the site of mass graves. A monument in memory of the local Jewish community was erected at the initiative of Ignatz Bubis, a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany – his mother lived, died, and was buried in Dęblin.

In the early 1990s, tutelage of the site was held by the Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw and the Union of Jewish Religious Communities. In the 2000s, it has been taken over by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage. The area of the cemetery has been fenced, cleaned up, and the grass has been mowed.

Nowadays, there is not a single fully preserved tombstone present in the cemetery area covering ca. 0.9 hectares. In 1999, Andrzej Trzciński of the Department of Culture and History of Jews at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin took inventory of the cemetery. He recorded only 47 fragments of tombstones, including 30 pediments of broken stelae and two horizontal blocks without stelae. The oldest discovered matzeva dates back to 1842. A list of found tombstones together with their photographs can be found on the website https://sztetl.org.pl/pl/miejscowosci/b/649-bobrowniki/115-pamiec-w-kamieniu/7899-cmentarz-zydowski-w-bobrownikach-ul-deblinska%20 [accessed: 11 September 2020].

In 1989, the cemetery was entered into the register of monuments under the number A-999, dated 30 December 1989.

Description copyright owner: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews