Some twenty years later (in 1616), Zbigniew Gorajski – the erstwhile owner of the town – granted Jews the right to freely settle in Biłgoraj, purchase land, build a synagogue, and establish a cemetery.

The Description

The land designated for the Jewish cemetery was located outside the erstwhile boundary of the town. It was a rectangular plot 36 metres long and 54 metres wide, with a total area of 0.2 hectares. A complex of Jewish religious community buildings with houses of prayer, synagogue, alms house, and mikveh was erected on adjacent plots to the east of the cemetery. Over time, the cemetery ceased to be used and started to serve as a pasture. This was the case until World War II, when the cemetery was completely devastated. After the war, a residential housing estate was developed at the site, at Lubelska and Nadstawna Streets.

Another Jewish cemetery was established in Biłgoraj around the mid-18th century. It was located south of the Market Square, at today’s Polna Street. It had an area of 0.4 hectare. It was used until the late 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, the cemetery was surrounded with a wooden fence, later replaced with a wall. The necropolis was devastated by the troops of Organisation Todt during World War II. Barracks were erected at the site, with the floors paved with vandalised matzevot. After 1945, a school was built on the former premises of the cemetery.

The third Jewish cemetery was founded in the first half of the 19th century, a little bit farther from the city centre, in the Piaski suburb. Its plot has the shape of an irregular hexagon with an area of 2.44 hectares. In the interwar period, it was surrounded with a stone wall. At the time, the cemetery held ca. 1,000 matzevot and an ohel erected at the grave of one of the rabbis of Biłgoraj.

This cemetery was also devastated during World War II. The matzevot were pulled out and used as construction material, for example to build pavements in the town. The Germans used the cemetery as a site of mass executions and burials of the victims. Four mass graves have been identified within the area of the cemetery. They hold the bodies of Biłgoraj Jews, Jews from the Tarnów Ghetto, and a group of 200 Jewish girls murdered in November 1942. In November 1948, the remains of Jews buried in other places in the town were exhumed and moved to the cemetery.

After the war, the area of the cemetery was significantly reduced. The newly obtained land was parcelled and used to develop a concrete factory and a house factory. Today, the cemetery has an area of 0.26 hectare and is surrounded with a modern fence with a gate. Ca. 50 tombstones have been preserved, most of them tumbled over, lying on the ground.

In the 1980s, first cleaning works were carried out on the premises of the cemetery at the initiative of Art Lumerman, a Jew from Biłgoraj. In 1986, Lumerman founded a monument commemorating the Lumerman and Kantor families. A lapidarium was established next to the monument, containing pieces of 19th- and 20th-century matzevot as well as 18th-century tombstones recovered from the old cemetery.

In 1990, by the decision of the Provincial Conservator of Monuments, the cemetery was entered in the register of monuments under the number A-482, dated 12 March 1990.

Fragments of several dozen matzevot were found near a church in Biłgoraj in 2003; during the war, they had been used to build a pavement in the area. They were collected and placed in the Jewish cemetery. In 2006, damaged Torah scrolls recovered from one of the buildings in Biłgoraj were buried at the site. Maintenance works are periodically carried out on the premises of the necropolis.

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