JEWISH CEMETERY

Hebrew: beit k’varot ie. house of graves, or beit olam ie. house of the eternal world). According to Jewish tradition, the cemetery is a somber, yet sacred, place. The place of a burial should be marked with a gravestone, and the whole cemetery should be fenced off with a wall, ditch, or embankment. The Talmud says that a cemetery should be situated 25 meters from the nearest house. Beginning in the 17th century, new standards of hygiene led to cemeteries being established outside town centers. In Jewish cemeteries, women, men and children are buried separately. Graves of those who committed suicide are to be located near the cemetery fence, while those who converted from Judaism are to buried outside the wall. When space became a problem, older graves were buried with about two meters of soil, so that they remained undamaged by new graves added above.

The first Jewish cemetery in Oswiecim was established around 1588. However, it is uncertain exactly where it was located. Today the only surviving cemetery, established at the turn of the 19^th century, is situated at the corner of Dabrowski Street and Wysokie Brzegi.

During World War II, the synagogue was devastated by the Nazis, and in 1941 the cemetery was closed, just after the Jews were deported from Oswiecim. During the first decade after the war, Jews who returned to Oswiecim took care of the cemetery. In the years that followed, the fence surrounding the graveyard was repaired. In the 1980s, the cemetery was renovated thanks to donation from Asher Scharf of New York. Part of the tombstones, matzevas, was arranged in lapidaria. An ohel (tent) in honor of the Scharf family was constructed, as was another which covers the grave of Szymon Kluger, the last Jew of Oswiecim. About 800 tombstones have been preserved to date in the Jewish cemetery of Oswiecim.