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About Cemetery
The first Jewish cemetery in Lodz was founded in the year 1811 and was
situated at the former Wesola Street. In the 50's of the XX century a
road and apartment houses were built on cemetery grounds. Today only a
memorial stone, erected in 2004 thanks to the initiative of mayor of
Lodz, Dr. Jerzy Kropiwnicki, commemorates this area.
The cemetery at Bracka Street was founded in 1892 and it is estimated
that about
160 000 people are buried there. It is 39.6 hectares large. During the
100 years of the cemetery's history many meritorious people like rabbis,
teachers, industrialists, doctors, politicians, social activists etc.
were buried there. Their grave stones are mostly masterpieces of
blacksmiths and stonecutters art.
In the cemetery are buried also the victims of one of the most tragic
events in mankind history – the Holocaust. There are about 43 000 people
buried in the part of the cemetery called Ghetto Field, who died of
starvation, illnesses and extenuation. In that place there are very few
tombstones. To bring the memory of those people back, the Foundation
Monumentum Judaicum Lodzense decided to clean this area, regardless of
other works carried out at the cemetery. This became the most important
and essential project at the cemetery, to allow the descendants of the
victims to put tombstones on the grave of their loved ones and gave the
Ghetto Field the character of a military cemetery, since de facto it is
one.
Thanks to the kindness and the financial support of Mr. Josef Buchman
from Frankfurt on Main, a data base was created of those who were buried
in this cemetery. Up to day we were able to assemble a database of
approximately 90,000 people. We will not rest in our efforts in
completing the database with the information we constantly receive from
other sources. If we will be able to receive further donations, we will
start to cataloguing and preparing photo records of the remaining
gravestones and writing down the information of the deceased we will
fill the gaps in our database for the cemetery.
Recently we opened a web site, where everybody will be able to check the
names of people buried in particular quarters of the cemetery. The
detailed information about the accurate place of burial will be
available in the LODZ JEWS ARCHIVE being created by the Foundation
Monumentum Judaicum Lodzense together with the Jewish Community of Lodz
at 18 Pomorska Street.
If
you are interested in the activities of the
Foundation, you can contact us at:
fundacja@lodzjews.org
For those, who are interested in contributing to the
Ghetto Field project, please find below our banking
information:
ING Bank Sl¹ski o/£ódŸ
54 10501461 1000002280014412
IBAN PL54105014611000002280014412
Nr BIC SWIFT: INGBPLPW |
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