In the period of the Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Poland (Congress Poland), the policy of the state authorities encouraged Jews to move from the countryside to cities and towns. As a result, Parysów experienced a rapid influx of Jewish settlers. There were 220 Jews living in the town in 1827, accounting for 28% of the total population. Most members of the community traditionally worked in trade and crafts.

In the mid-19th century, Parysów became home to Joshua Asher Rabinowicz (d. 1862), known as the Yid Hakudosh of Peshischa (Holy Jew of Przysucha). He converted the town into one of the most important centres of Hasidism, establishing a local tzaddik dynasty with a court and numerous followers. Joshua was succeeded by his sons Yaakov Tzvi and Meir Shalom. According to the Russian census of 1897, there were over 2,000 Jews in Parysów (64% of the total population).

The town retained its predominantly Jewish character in reborn Poland, although the share of Jews in the total population was gradually falling. In the first census Polish of 1921, there were over 1,900 Jews recorded in Parysów, still constituting more than a half of all residents (56%). Apart from a brick synagogue erected in the 19th century at Borowska Street, the Jewish community also had two prayer houses and a mikveh.

The last chapter in the history of Parysów Jews opened with the invasion of German troops in mid-September 1939. The local synagogue was desecrated and vandalised in October. At the end of the year, the Germans established a Judenrat (Jewish Council) which was tasked with supplying a quota of forced labourers (they worked in the area of Wilga and Sobolew). In October 1941, the Germans established an open ghetto in Parysów, located in the centre of the town, near the synagogue, east of the Market Square. Its population comprised local Jews and people displaced from Warsaw, Garwolin, and other localities. It is estimated that a total of 3,500 people was held in the ghetto.

The Parysów Ghetto was liquidated at the end of September 1942, preceded by the deportation of 3,000 Jews from the ghetto in Stoczek Łukowski into the town. The Germans then surrounded the Jewish district with a cordon, drove all its prisoners out of their homes, and gathered them in the Market Square. The Jews were then led to the railway station in Pilawa. Still in the Market Square, the Germans executed a group of sick and disabled people. All others were crammed into train cars in Pilawa and taken to the gas chambers of the Treblinka extermination camp.

The Description

The Jews of Parysów buried their dead in a cemetery located south of the village of Starowola, on the left side of an unpaved road leading towards Borowice, by the rail track (plot no. 240). The exact date of the establishment of the necropolis remains unidentified. It certainly had been founded by the mid-19th century. In the interwar period, the cemetery was surrounded with a plank fence supported on red brick pillars. The caretaker’s flat stood at the edge of the necropolis. Covering an area of around one hectare, the cemetery held an ohel in its central part. It marked the resting place of local tzaddikim, beginning with Joshua Asher Rabinowicz of Zshelikhov, son of Judah. The tomb was a pilgrimage site for Hasidim from all corners of the country. During the Holocaust, the cemetery was used to bury people of Jewish origin who died or were killed in the Parysów Ghetto. It was also the burial site of a group of people shot by the Germans during the deportation action (their mass grave remains unmarked).

The cemetery was devastated during World War II, with the Germans pulling out sandstone slabs and other valuable matzevot. The site suffered further damage at the hands of the local population, who would use plundered stones in construction works. After the war, the cemetery was ploughed and a forest was planted on its premises. The surviving graves were occasionally looted in search of valuables. The cemetery became a sand mine (with human bones brought to the surface during its extraction) and an illegal rubbish dump.

In the autumn of 2006, the Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw was notified of instances of graves being dug up in the process of extracting sand. It sent an employee of the Rabbinical Commission for Cemeteries to the site. He buried the scattered bones and filed an application with the Parysów Municipality Office to remove rubbish from the cemetery. Thanks to the involvement of the police, the Catholic parish, and the municipality, the cemetery was cleaned up. The rubbish was removed, the boundaries of the burial area were established and the cemetery was secured to prevent further gravel extraction. A concrete fence was placed on the side of the necropolis adjacent to the road. Tutelage of the cemetery was handed over to the students of the local secondary school.

The necropolis is located on a low hill on the edge of the forest, next to an unguarded railway crossing. The last surviving tombstone at the site can be found in a pit left by a destroyed grave. It is made of a simple granite stone and bears a Hebrew inscription commemorating a woman named Chawa (d. 1854). In 2011, the exact burial place of Tzaddik Joshua Asher Rabinowicz of Parisov was determined in the presence of Duvid Singer, a representative of the Hasidic community from New York. An ohel was erected over the grave two years later, with three contemporary matzevot placed inside. One of them commemorates the tzaddik. In 2016, the cemetery was fenced on the initiative of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage.

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