Bagnowka Cemetery

דער אַרײנגאַנג פון באַגנאָווקער בית-עלמין PR‏ בּיאַליסטאָק. די װאַנט ...

... דער איבערגעבליבענער פּונדאַמענט pb‏ דעם דענקמאָל אױף באגנאָווקער בית-עלמין, נאָך די געפאַלענע בּיאַליסטאָקער אידן אין דעם פּאָגראָם פון יאָר 1906. ...

... In our subsequent talks with the Polish Govern- ment, we emphasized the disgraceful condition of Jew- ish cemeteries. The ministers assured us that they would restore many of these burial places and, upon my insis- tence, they promised to rehabilitate Bagnowke Ceme- tery in Bialystok. ...

... When Dr. Datner and I arrived in Bialystok, Szyja Bartnowski guided us to sites where memorable build- ings and other places of interest used to be. We were saddened that the three Jewish cemeteries in Bialystok are neglected. The Bagnowke Cemetery was desecrated, monuments either gone or vandalized. Houses were built on its grounds. The old cemetery on Minski street has been shut down; a pedestrian walkway crisscrosses it to the center of town. The Zabia Cemetery within the Bialystok ghetto was converted into a park. Thirty-five hundred graves were disturbed, the remains exhumed and reburied together in an obscure corner of the area. A monument draws attention in Polish to this fact. Szyja Bartnowski promised me he would take care of this monument. I looked around, hoping against hope that something familiar would appear, that my aliena- tion would subside. I became increasingly depressed as I wandered through the city.

... For us Bialystoker Jews, the grounds of the ghetto cemetery were sacred, a stretch of earth in the north- western corner. The Nazis forbade us to bury our dead in the old Bagnowke Cemetery, because it was situated outside the ghetto and we would have to leave its .con- fines. Thus a piece of land within the ghetto walls was selected as a burial ground. ...

... Cantor Czudin (former cantor of Neuwelt Bet Mid- rash), who in the last few years was the only one to recite memorial prayers at Bagnowke Cemetery, told friends half-jokingly that he did not wish to be laid to rest at Bagnowke. He died of a heart attack during the liquidation and was buried at the Zabia cemetery.

The monument erected at the mass grave of the 1906 pogrom victims in the Bagnowke Cemetery. The epitaph was composed by the famous poet, Zalman Sznejur. ...