In 1639, the local community must have already been well-organised and numerous, because it received a royal privilege from King Władysław IV under which they were allowed to buy plots of land, build houses, engage in trade, produce alcohol, erect a synagogue and a mikveh, and establish a cemetery. In 1662, these rights were confirmed by King John II Casimir. However, there is no preserved information on when exactly when the first synagogue, mikveh, and cemetery were founded.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery was established on a hill at the northern edge of the town, at today’s Zagumienny Zaułek Street. At the turn of the 19th century, its area was enlarged by purchasing an adjacent plot of land. The oldest sections of the necropolis are located in its south-eastern part. The newer sector, probably opened after 1840, was separated from the old quarters by an alley. The entire perimeter of the cemetery was surrounded with a stone wall with a wooden gate on the southern side.

The Jews of Krynki were subordinate to the kehilla in Grodno. The Krynki community became independent in 1691; at the time, it was already playing a significant role in the region. In the 18th century, it was one of the most numerous Jewish communities in this part of Poland.

In the 19th century, Krynki became a prosperous centre of textile production and leather processing. This was thanks to the activity of Jewish entrepreneurs, who were supplying goods to the Russian Army. However, the fires of 1879, 1882, and 1887 hampered the development of Krynki and led to the town losing its importance to Białystok. In 1897, Jewish people constituted nearly 85% of all 5,000 inhabitants of Krynki. The beginning of the 20th century saw the onset of an economic and demographic crisis of the town. Many of its inhabitants decided to migrate.

In September 1939, Krynki was first invaded by the Wehrmacht and later taken over by the Red Army. In June 1941, control of the town was once again taken by the Germans. They fired a missile at the Jews gathered in the field near the town, killing ca. 40 people. Their bodies were buried in mass graves in the Jewish cemetery. The Germans vandalised the necropolis and removed many matzevot in order to use them as building material.

After the war, in 1947, a group of Holocaust survivors organised the exhumation of the remains of ca. 40 Jews murdered by the Germans on Passover in 1943. The wartime mass graves are yet to be marked in any way.

The necropolis continued to fall into decline over the following post-war decades. It could be easily accessed as its wall had been destroyed. Local residents grazed animals on the cemetery grounds and used them as a garbage dump.

At the end of the 1980s, Tomasz Wiśniewski and Andrzej Grajter thoroughly documented the cemetery. They were able to identify over 3,000 tombstones on the rectangular plot covering 2.489 hectares. The recorded matzevot were carved in conglomerate, granite, sandstone, and concrete. The oldest tombstone commemorated Chaim, son of Beniamin, who died in 1758. The number of preserved tombstones has since significantly decreased due to dilapidation or looting. Nevertheless, the cemetery in Krynki holds the largest number of surviving matzevot among all Jewish burial sites in Podlasie. It was entered into the register of monuments under number A-115, dated 30 December 1987.

In 2008, an information board presenting the history of the cemetery was placed at the site on the initiative of the “Drumla” Association for Podlasie Land (Polish: Stowarzyszenie na Rzecz Ziemi Podlaskiej „Drumla”), as part of the project “Following the Stories from the Past of Podlasie” (Polish: “Śladami opowieści z przeszłości Podlasia”).

The cemetery in Krynki is currently cared after by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland. Since the beginning of the 21st century, cleaning works at the site have been regularly carried out on the initiative of local social activists, often with the participation of school students and volunteers. The Foundation for Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries has compiled a list of tombstones preserved in the cemetery. It is available on the Foundation's website: https://cemetery.jewish.org.pl/list/c_86 [accessed: 27 November 2020].

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