Izbica was initially quite small, but due to its favourable location on the Warsaw–Lublin–Lviv route, it was granted the right to hold fairs as early as 1754. From that moment on, the local population started to gradually grow in size. In the first years after the resettlement of Jews from Tarnogród to Izbica, they still belonged to the kehilla in the former town. The seat of the community was moved to Izbica in 1775. It was probably at that time that a wooden synagogue was erected in the town, preceded by the opening of a Jewish cemetery (probably ca. 1754).

In 1827, Izbica had 407 Jewish residents, accounting for a full 100% of the population. In 1860, their number increased to 1,450. In 1897, as many as 3,019 people lived in Izbica, 95% of whom were Jewish.

In 1839, Izbica became home to Tzaddik Yosef Mordechai Leiner, disciple of Simcha Bunim of Peshischa (Przysucha) and Menachem Mendel Morgenstern of Kotzk (Kock). He founded a Hasidic court in the town, visited by pilgrims from the entire area. He was buried in the Izbica cemetery. His son Yaakov Leiner moved his court to Radzyń Podlaski. The Izbica-Radzyń dynasty is currently based in Bnei Brak, Israel. In the interwar period, Izbica became a Hasidic centre once again, this time thanks to Tzaddik Tzvi Rabinowicz, a descendant of the Yid Hakudosh of Peshischa (Holy Jew of Przysucha).

The Description

The Jewish cemetery was established about 250 metres north of the Market Square, on a hill east of the road from Krasnystaw to Zamość. It covered an area of 1.26 hectare.

During World War II, executions were carried out at the cemetery until 1943. It is estimated that the Germans murdered and buried nearly 4,500 Jews from the Izbica Ghetto at the site. The cemetery itself suffered significant damage. The stone wall was destroyed. Some of the matzevot were torn out on the order of SS-Hauptscharführer Kurt Engels, head of the Gestapo in the Krasnystaw District. They were used as building material in the construction of the Gestapo jail in Izbica, crushed into small pieces and laid like bricks. Matzevot continued to disappear from the cemetery after the war, stolen by the local residents.

In the 1960s, the cemetery was fenced with wire mesh. It became overgrown with trees and thick bushes. Only two free-standing tombstones and several dozen fragments of broken matzevot have survived to the present day.

In 1995, an ohel was erected over the grave of Tzadik Yosef Mordechai Leiner on the initiative of Chief Rabbi of Galicia Edgar Gluck. The key is kept in a private house near the cemetery. Its owners take care of the necropolis, regularly mowing the grass and cleaning up the area.

Priest Grzegorz Pawłowski (Jakub Hersz Griner, a Holocaust Survivor) and his brother Chaim Griner founded a monument at the cemetery to commemorate their murdered family and the Jews of the Izbica Ghetto. With the rabbi’s permission, Pawłowski placed a tombstone right next to the monument – this is where he wishes to be buried after his death.

Since 2003, maintenance works at the cemetery have also been carried out by the teachers and students of the School Complex in Izbica. They work in cooperation with the “Bildungswerk Stanisław Hantz” organisation based in Kassel, Germany. A group of pupils of the local school has participated in the “To Bring Back Memory ” project of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage (FODŻ), during which the volunteers cleaned up the cemetery area. Roses have been planted along the main path and information boards have been placed at two mass graves and at the edge of the cemetery. Cleaning works at the site have also been carried out by the inmates and employees of the remand prison in Krasnystaw as part of the initiative "Tikkun – Restoration."

In 2006, the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland initiated the “Izbica Jewish Cemetery Commemoration Project.” Its first stage consisted in pulling down the building of the former Gestapo jail built with the use of matzevot. The works were carried out in the presence of cameras of the German film producer Tvschoenfilm. The filmed footage will be used in a documentary about Gestapo commander Kurt Engels. The recovered tombstone fragments were then placed on the external façade of the ohel of Tzaddik Leiner. The remaining smaller, more damaged pieces of matzevot are to be embedded into a new fence. In the second stage of the project, a monument commemorating Izbica Jews was erected with the support of the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany. It was unveiled in November 2006. The necropolis is yet to be fenced.

The Izbica cemetery was entered into the register of monuments under the number A-476, dated 30 January 1990. A list of tombstones preserved at the site is available on the website of the Foundation for Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries at https://cemetery.jewish.org.pl/list/c_59 [accessed: 23 September 2020].

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