Preserved Polish Jewish cemetery hit by vandals

Several tombstones were damaged as a result of vandalism at a Jewish cemetery in Poland.

The attack on the headstones at the cemetery of Klodzko in western Poland took place late last month, according to a statement posted last week on the website of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, which has worked with local volunteers to preserve the site.

In a separate action, the foundation last month unveiled a monument at a site that once was a Jewish cemetery in Rajgrod, in northern Poland, before it was destroyed during the Holocaust.

The monument, which was built in Israel and shipped to Poland ahead of a ceremony attended by several dozen people, was the initiative of Avi Tzur, an Israeli whose family lived in Rajgrod before immigrating to Brazil.

The project took two years to complete, according to foundation director Monika Krawczyk.

“This forgotten and very tiny community produced sons and daughters who never forgot, and did everything to save the memory of those who perished,” she told JTA.

Another project connected to Jewish cemeteries in Poland moved forward on Tuesday when the city of Warsaw dismantled a structure that was made out of some 1,000 Jewish headstones and began the process of moving the headstones to the Jewish cemetery from which they were collected decades ago to serve as building material.

Last month, the city pledged approximately $180,000 for the project in negotiations with Jonny Daniels, the Israel-based founder of From the Depths, an international Holocaust-commemoration organization.