Zabia cemetery

... (This moving poem was written by Ruwen Rybalowski in memory of his daughter Frida, killed in the Bialystok ghetto uprising on August 16, 1943. He wrote these lines while standing over the grave of seventy heroes buried in the Zabia cemetery in Bialystok, his daughter presumably among them. Ruwen Rybalowski, who spent the war years in Russia, returned to his home- town at the end of the war. He submitted this elegy to the Jewish Reconstruction Committee in Bialystok in December 1946. Mr. Rybalowski, the late brother of Izaak Rybal, General Secretary of the Bialystoker Cen- ter in New York, spent the rest of his life in Uruguay, where he died in 1955. His younger daughter, Liza, whom he mentions at the end of the poem, also passed away there in 1972. This poem was copied from the original by Dr. Szymon Datner.) ...

... 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 months I continued to write letters of protest demanding the desecration of the Zabia cemetery be remedied. It was like crying in the wilderness. ...

... THE SACRED ZABIA CEMETERY ...

... Digging up these large pits, our exhumation bri- gade found the bodies of several resistance fighters murdered by the Nazis. Among them were the corpses of a woman about thirty years old, a small child next to her, a man and a girl about twelve years old. Further- more, the gravediggers uncovered bullets as well as a passport belonging to a Jechezkel Zolti. Another ca- daver was riddled with twenty-eight bullet holes, his name Zecharja Kaplan. The total of exhumed corpses soared to 230. Evidently some of them had been forced Into the pit and buried alive. They were all interred in the Zabia cemetery on November 22, 1945. ...

... office on the second floor. In the winter of 1942-43, he hanged three Jews for allegedly stealing sunflower seeds from an oil factory. In February 1943, during the first liquidation action, he shot an eighty-year-old woman in the street because she was unsuitable for labor. He directed and participated in the execution of a hundred hostages in retaliation for the Malmed incident. He shot Izchok Malmed after the latter’s body fell from the gal- lows. On May 4, 1943, he murdered a group of butchers, and in that same month shot 150 men cap- tured during a police raid. On August 20, 1943, he liq- uidated the ghetto hospital and personally shot 300 patients near the previously excavated pits in the Zabia cemetery. At Gestapo headquarters he personally shot three Partisans because they refused to stand with their hands raised. In November 1943, he took away a group of sixty children from their parents in prison and killed them. In 1944, he shot a group of lawyers. In the pri- son, he conducted two selections every week, resulting in the deaths of scores of people. During a visit to the Grodno prison he shot twenty-five Jews. He terrorized the Jewish population and robbed their possessions. ...

... On Friday, August 20, the fifth day, the Nazis killed more than two hundred patients, as well as doc- tors and nurses, at the Jewish hospital. The seriously ill were loaded onto military wagons, which formed two rows. Those who could walk were forced to stand between the wagons. Under Friedl’s supervision, they were driven to the Zabia cemetery. ...

... 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.

... Several days after the ghetto was established, a cemetery area was set aside, which was named Zabia Cemetery, located at Polna Street behind Katok’s mill. ...