It had 514 members in 1897. In the following years, the number of Jewish inhabitants of Sosnowica was dwindling. In the 1920s, the town was inhabited by 300 Jews. Despite the decreasing number of Jewish residents, the community constituted 50% of the total population of Sosnowica.

At the time of its greatest prosperity, the Jewish community in Sosnowica probably employed a rabbi. Around the same period, that is at the turn of the 20th century, it founded its own burial site. For this purpose, it selected a plot of land located ca. 1 km from the Market Square, near the road to Górki, an offshoot of the highway leading south-east (currently road no. 819).

The Description

The cemetery was administered by the Jewish community in Ostrów Lubelski. It was used for burials until World War II. The Germans started murdering local Jews at the beginning of the occupation, as early as October 1939. The first victims was a group of 30 people. At the beginning of 1941, Jews from Mława were resettled to Sosnowica, followed by a group of deportees from Lublin in March. In April 1942, Jewish children were deported from the town and murdered. In November 1942, all remaining Jews staying in Sosnowica were transported to the ghetto in Włodawa. They were later murdered in the Treblinka II and Sobibór extermination camps. A handful managed to escape to the forests and join the partisans.

During the war, the Germans vandalised the cemetery. The devastation continued after 1945, as was the case of many burial sites of communities annihilated in the Holocaust. Local residents used the tombstones as construction material. The only recorded tombstone from the Sosnowica, dating from 1924, is only known from a photo.

As a result of many years of devastation, no relics of tombstones have been preserved in the cemetery. Its area is overgrown with a dense pine forest. Its boundaries, arrangement of quarters, and traces of graves have faded away. The cemetery plot is distinguished only by a roughly half-metre high bulge (an embankment of sorts), several metres wide, running parallel to the forest road. The cemetery has been included in the route of the Sosnowica – Jamniki "Nałęcz" history and nature trail. A wooden board has been placed at the site. The cemetery plot belongs to the State Treasury and is administered by the State Forests Directorate (Parczew Forestry District).

Właściciel praw autorskich do opisu: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN.