In 1845, a Jewish religious community was established in Garwolin. It encompassed the town itself as well as Parysów, Osieck, and Sobienie-Jeziory. The new community took efforts to found a burial site. It selected a plot of land located ca. 4 km south of the town, ca. 100 m from the road to Lublin. It belonged to the owners of Sulbiny Górne, Florentyna and Józef Wyczółkowski. On 17 October 1862, a perpetual lease agreement was signed by the representatives of the Synagogue Supervision Board and the Wyczółkowski family. It regarded a rectangular plot of land with an area of 4 morgen, with dimensions of 15 rods by 80 rods. The Jewish community undertook to build a shed and a funeral home on the premises. The agreement was entered into the land registration book on 5 March 1864, but the first burials at the site had taken place even earlier. This is evidenced by the oldest preserved matzeva from the cemetery, which according to the Jewish Historical Institute dates back to 1863. As evidenced by a photograph included in the Garwolin Memorial Book – Garwolin Yizkor bukh. Sefer yizkor (1972), the cemetery held many tall tombstones adorned with polychrome paintings. There were no trees growing on the premises, and the grass was mowed regularly.

During World War II, the Germans destroyed the cemetery. They used the matzevot to build a swimming pool for Kreishauptmann Karl Ludwig Freudenthal. A housing estate was later erected at the site; the pool itself was filled with soil and garages were built on the levelled terrain.

The Description

Nowadays, the area of the Jewish cemetery forms part of the village of Sulbiny. It is not fenced, only delimited from the north by a natural boundary in the form of a flowing stream. The area is overgrown with pine and oak trees. A total of twenty-five tombstones have been preserved, but they are not standing in their original places. These are mainly simple granite slabs and sandstone matzevot. The inscriptions are now almost illegible. A few feature visible traces of bas-reliefs depicting candlesticks – symbols suggesting that the deceased was a woman. In the western part of the cemetery, there is a large slab that once served as a protection for a grave. Traces on its surface suggest that the grave has been excavated. A list of tombstones from the Garwolin-Sulbiny cemetery is available on the website of the Foundation for Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland.

https://cemetery.jewish.org.pl/list/c_8.

The owner of the cemetery plot is the State Forests Directorate (Garwolin Forestry District).

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