| Cemetery Description: |
"There are 2 Jewish cemeteries in Brzesko: the old one which was established probably around the end of the 17th century (no certain data) and the new one with the oldest found matzeva from 1822. Most likely Brzesko Jews bought a piece of land for the new cemetery after the old one became full.
The old cemetery located in the very center of the town, doesn’t have any matzevot now, but people are still buried there, and couple of years ah=go we managed to put a memorial stone that clearly indicates that it’s a cemetery. According to the testimony of Leon Epstein, a Jew who used to be in the Brzesko ghetto, Germans forced the Jews to take matzevot from the old cemetery and use them to pave one of the squares in the town. You can read more about this cemetery here: https://brzesko-briegel.pl/en/history-of-cemeteries/ And here is the photo showing the exact location of the old cemetery: https://brzesko-briegel.pl/en/2020/03/07/jewish-cemeteries-in-brzesko/
The following list obviously refers only to the new Jewish cemetery located in Brzesko at Czarnowiejska street. Dates are provided as month/day/year; some information below comes not from the inscriptions, but from death records of the deceased. Inscriptions on many Brzesko matzevot don’t have the last name of the deceased. Wherever it was possible, we added the last names based on death records (when the first name, name of father and date of death corresponded to data from death records). The earliest surviving Brzesko death records are from 1877, so in case of older matzevot it’s impossible to learn the last name of the deceased if it’s not inscribed on the tombstone. New Jewish cemetery in Brzesko served as a burial place for Jews not only from Brzesko, but also surrounding villages and small towns, such as Wojnicz, Czchów, Zakliczyn, Dębno, Jadowniki, Borzęcin, Radłów, Szczurowa, Poręba Spytkowska, Jasień and many others. Some of these places had vital records books of their own and some of those were either destroyed or are not available for research because of being kept in the civil offices and not in the archives. This is mainly the reason why we couldn’t attribute last names to many matzevot from the end of the 19th-beginning of the 20th centuries which don’t have these data.
The oldest matzeva found at the cemetery comes from 1822; the last burial took place in 1960. There are also several mass graves from World War II at the cemetery. Up to 500 Jews murdered in Brzesko can be buried in them, although it’s impossible to determine the exact number. There are also several tombstones commemorating Jews who were murdered during the war. In some cases it’s impossible to determine, whether those are only symbolic graves or the people are actually buried there. The cemetery has also got a World War I military quarter with 21 graves of Jewish soldiers from the Austrian army who died in hospitals in Brzesko and vicinity.
For more details please visit https://cemetery.jewish.org.pl/list/c_100/ and starting from June 2023 - https://brzesko-briegel.pl/en/ where we will provide the database of all Brzesko matzevot will full texts of inscriptions in the original Hebrew and translation into English and Polish, plus data from death records wherever those are available. Please email us at info@brzesko-briegel.pl to obtain any information on Jews from Brzesko and vicinity."
|
