A MATZEVAH IS RESTORED IN TARNÓW:
Tarnów descendant Dr. Anne Singer found in her family records a pre-WWII photo of her ancestor Josef Bluttner’s matzevah from the Tarnów Jewish cemetery (above left). She and her husband Jay approached the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Tarnów after seeing a modern photo of the same tombstone: moss-covered, weathered, and fallen on its back, recorded in an online index supported by the Tarnów Committee and by our Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FJHP) and by the Foundation for the Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland and JRI-Poland (above middle). With Anne and Jay’s support and that of Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland, the Committee, led in this project by Magda Bartosz, working with architectural conservationist Derek Jaworek and his team successfully completed the restoration of the matzevah this Spring (above right).
Such projects do not happen quickly and take immense work but are immensely satisfying to all involved. Please read more about the Tarnów cemetery and support our work there.
As part of the Committee’s massive (and still ongoing) local and EU-supported and FJHP-supported project to protect and restore that cemetery, the Committee was able to map out the current location of the tombstone and the photo below shows Anne and Jay proudly standing in front of that map during the Tarnów Jewish Reunion in 2023.
Tarnów descendant Dr. Anne Singer found in her family records a pre-WWII photo of her ancestor Josef Bluttner’s matzevah from the Tarnów Jewish cemetery (above left). She and her husband Jay approached the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Tarnów after seeing a modern photo of the same tombstone: moss-covered, weathered, and fallen on its back, recorded in an online index supported by the Tarnów Committee and by our Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FJHP) and by the Foundation for the Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland and JRI-Poland (above middle). With Anne and Jay’s support and that of Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland, the Committee, led in this project by Magda Bartosz, working with architectural conservationist Derek Jaworek and his team successfully completed the restoration of the matzevah this Spring (above right).
Such projects do not happen quickly and take immense work but are immensely satisfying to all involved. Please read more about the Tarnów cemetery and support our work there.
As part of the Committee’s massive (and still ongoing) local and EU-supported and FJHP-supported project to protect and restore that cemetery, the Committee was able to map out the current location of the tombstone and the photo below shows Anne and Jay proudly standing in front of that map during the Tarnów Jewish Reunion in 2023.
HELP US CLEAN THE KAŃCZUGA JEWISH CEMETERY:
We are working with FODŻ and descendants of the Kańczuga Jewish community to raise money for a desperately-needed cleaning of the town’s cemetery. Established over a century ago, Kańczuga’s cemetery also served the many towns around it. Today, the cemetery has an intact protective wall and gate, but it is overgrown with greenery and plants, becoming inaccessible. Please consider supporting our work alongside FODŻ and the descendants of this town’s Jewish community to restore dignity and access to this sacred place. To learn more or donate, please visit our Kańczuga page.
We are working with FODŻ and descendants of the Kańczuga Jewish community to raise money for a desperately-needed cleaning of the town’s cemetery. Established over a century ago, Kańczuga’s cemetery also served the many towns around it. Today, the cemetery has an intact protective wall and gate, but it is overgrown with greenery and plants, becoming inaccessible. Please consider supporting our work alongside FODŻ and the descendants of this town’s Jewish community to restore dignity and access to this sacred place. To learn more or donate, please visit our Kańczuga page.
ACTIVATE YOUR GENEALOGY: Join FJHP at IAJGS 2025
We invite you to join us in Fort Wayne, Indiana for the 45th Jewish genealogy conference presented by the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) from August 10-14, 2025.
Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland will have a booth at the Sunday "SHARE Fair,” plus a booth in the exhibition room during the week. FJHP project leaders Hatte Blejer, Ed Janes, Jeffrey Miller, and Special Volunteer Jeri Ann Karlsberg will all be attending and are happy to share their experiences in the world of preserving the Jewish cemeteries in Poland. (Jeff and Hatte are both giving genealogy-related presentations at the conference as well.) Sponsored in part by FJHP, historian Krzysztof Bielawski, staff member of the Foundation for Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, will present two lectures, including one about his new book “The Destruction of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland.” During our FJHP Birds of a Feather meeting, he will meet informally with descendants interested in supporting or preserving their own ancestral Jewish cemeteries. Paweł Bajerlein, who has done immense work in preserving and documenting the Kożmin Wielkopolskie (Koschmin) Jewish cemetery, will also present two lectures about the Jewish history of that formerly Prussian region of Poland.
The conference will offer a significant number of lectures and programming related to Jewish-Polish topics.
Check out the conference at IAJGS2025.org. FJHP President Dan Oren is Program Chair for this year’s conference. Along with Dan, Jeri Ann Karlsberg, Krzysztof Bielawski, and Paweł Bajerlein will all be happy to share their latest insights fresh from their travels in Poland this summer. Come meet with us!
We invite you to join us in Fort Wayne, Indiana for the 45th Jewish genealogy conference presented by the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) from August 10-14, 2025.
Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland will have a booth at the Sunday "SHARE Fair,” plus a booth in the exhibition room during the week. FJHP project leaders Hatte Blejer, Ed Janes, Jeffrey Miller, and Special Volunteer Jeri Ann Karlsberg will all be attending and are happy to share their experiences in the world of preserving the Jewish cemeteries in Poland. (Jeff and Hatte are both giving genealogy-related presentations at the conference as well.) Sponsored in part by FJHP, historian Krzysztof Bielawski, staff member of the Foundation for Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, will present two lectures, including one about his new book “The Destruction of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland.” During our FJHP Birds of a Feather meeting, he will meet informally with descendants interested in supporting or preserving their own ancestral Jewish cemeteries. Paweł Bajerlein, who has done immense work in preserving and documenting the Kożmin Wielkopolskie (Koschmin) Jewish cemetery, will also present two lectures about the Jewish history of that formerly Prussian region of Poland.
The conference will offer a significant number of lectures and programming related to Jewish-Polish topics.
Check out the conference at IAJGS2025.org. FJHP President Dan Oren is Program Chair for this year’s conference. Along with Dan, Jeri Ann Karlsberg, Krzysztof Bielawski, and Paweł Bajerlein will all be happy to share their latest insights fresh from their travels in Poland this summer. Come meet with us!
RESTORING DIGNITY TO PRZYSUCHA
—a blog post by Jake Garfinkle, May 23, 2025
—a blog post by Jake Garfinkle, May 23, 2025
In an exciting update of our past work, Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland is grateful to have been one of the many partners involved in reconciliation and restoration efforts in Przysucha. These efforts, which are ongoing, recently saw the returning of Jewish gravestone fragments to the Przysucha Jewish Cemetery, sponsored and supported by a number of partners in Poland.
During the German occupation of Poland and the years to follow, many Jewish cemeteries were destroyed and Jewish gravestones were removed, being used as material for buildings and roads. Przysucha’s Jewish Cemetery, despite its long history and notable burials, was not spared from this fate. Some of the gravestones from the town’s Jewish cemetery were used to build a barn behind the fire station, where they remained until earlier this month. In May 2025, Professor Radosław Ptaszyński’s Jewish Przysucha Association oversaw the reclamation of matzevot from the old barn, with hundreds of gravestone fragments returning to their home in the cemetery. There, the matzevot will be cleaned, studied, and secured as part of ongoing efforts to revitalize the Jewish cemetery and honor the memory of those buried there, righting historical wrongs, piece by piece.
Article continues here...
During the German occupation of Poland and the years to follow, many Jewish cemeteries were destroyed and Jewish gravestones were removed, being used as material for buildings and roads. Przysucha’s Jewish Cemetery, despite its long history and notable burials, was not spared from this fate. Some of the gravestones from the town’s Jewish cemetery were used to build a barn behind the fire station, where they remained until earlier this month. In May 2025, Professor Radosław Ptaszyński’s Jewish Przysucha Association oversaw the reclamation of matzevot from the old barn, with hundreds of gravestone fragments returning to their home in the cemetery. There, the matzevot will be cleaned, studied, and secured as part of ongoing efforts to revitalize the Jewish cemetery and honor the memory of those buried there, righting historical wrongs, piece by piece.
Article continues here...
KOLBUSZOWA EMERGENCY CAMPAIGN:
On May 2, 2025 a large section of the front retaining wall of the Kolbuszowa Jewish cemetery accidentally collapsed, just two weeks after structural decay was noticed by a local resident. Please consider donating urgently to help us support efforts to fund the restoration of this wall and protect the integrity of the remains and the tombstones of those buried behind the wall!
To read more about this incident, see Polish media coverage.
On May 2, 2025 a large section of the front retaining wall of the Kolbuszowa Jewish cemetery accidentally collapsed, just two weeks after structural decay was noticed by a local resident. Please consider donating urgently to help us support efforts to fund the restoration of this wall and protect the integrity of the remains and the tombstones of those buried behind the wall!
To read more about this incident, see Polish media coverage.
An incredible effort is underway in Lublin to restore access to one of the world’s largest collections of Jewish religious texts, once thought to have been destroyed by the Germans. The Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, which held tens of thousands of Jewish religious texts and prints, was built in interwar Lublin and was intended to be a leader of Jewish education.
After the Holocaust, the yeshiva’s collections were gone, thought by many to have been destroyed. However, researchers have recently discovered many intact volumes in the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute and in collections across the world. Thanks to the devoted efforts of Piotr Nazaruk of Lublin’s Brama Grodzka, researchers in Lublin are working to restore the Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin collection by bringing texts back to the city and creating a digital collection of scanned copies.
With the generous support of David and Sherry Elbaum, FJHP is also contributing to the Brama Grodzka project and the work of the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw to scan further volumes.
The images shown here are a few sample pages of recently scanned works, featuring the official Yeshiva library stamp and pages from the responsa Sefer Shei Lamora (1653, Thessaloniki), the kabbalistic work Sefer Ir miklat (1690, Dyhernfurth) and Sefer Tiferet Israel (1774, Frankfurt an der Oder), the last of which is the first book mentioning the Vilna Gaon during his lifetime.
After the Holocaust, the yeshiva’s collections were gone, thought by many to have been destroyed. However, researchers have recently discovered many intact volumes in the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute and in collections across the world. Thanks to the devoted efforts of Piotr Nazaruk of Lublin’s Brama Grodzka, researchers in Lublin are working to restore the Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin collection by bringing texts back to the city and creating a digital collection of scanned copies.
With the generous support of David and Sherry Elbaum, FJHP is also contributing to the Brama Grodzka project and the work of the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw to scan further volumes.
The images shown here are a few sample pages of recently scanned works, featuring the official Yeshiva library stamp and pages from the responsa Sefer Shei Lamora (1653, Thessaloniki), the kabbalistic work Sefer Ir miklat (1690, Dyhernfurth) and Sefer Tiferet Israel (1774, Frankfurt an der Oder), the last of which is the first book mentioning the Vilna Gaon during his lifetime.
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