Jewish Cemetery

Warsaw


Founded in 1806, Warsaw's main Jewish Cemetery covering 33.4 hectares contains more than 150,000 tombstones, the largest and most beautiful collection of its kind in Europe. Incredibly it suffered little during WWII. A notice near the entrance lists the graves of many eminent Polish Jews, including Ludwik Zamenhof, creator of the international artificial language Esperanto. Men should cover their heads with a hat or a cap while in the cemetery.

The tomb of Ber Sonnenberg (1764–1822) is one of Europe’s finest funerary monuments; take the first paved path on the left beyond the ticket office and when you arrive at a junction on your right, look left: it’s the roofed structure over by the wall.

Scattered across the cemetery and marked by black poles tipped with orange are 24 tombstones designed by noted sculptor Abraham Ostrzega (1889–1942), who died in Treblinka concentration camp.

Look out also for the collective graves, in particular the incredibly moving Monument to the Children of the Ghetto, decorated with a handful of photographs of the some one million children who perished in the Holocaust; it's found to the right of the cemetery entrance besides a raised mound planted with silver birch trees. Nearby is a bronze statue of Dr Janusz Korczak, director of the Jewish orphanage in Warsaw who stayed with his charges in the ghetto, despite being offered sanctuary, and accompanied them to Treblinka.

A database of all who are buried here and at other Jewish cemeteries in Poland can be found at www.cemetery.jewish.org.pl.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Warsaw attractions

1. St Augustine Church

0.5 MILES

An area landmark, this red-brick Catholic church, consecrated in 1903, was within the Warsaw Ghetto. Germans used its tower as an observation point and a…

2. Powązki Cemetery

0.58 MILES

Warsaw's most prestigious cemetery covers 43 hectares and contains the graves of well over a million souls. Illustrious Poles from all walks of life are…

3. St Charles Borromeo Church

0.6 MILES

This late-18th-century church was designed by Domenico Merlini and stands beside the main entrance to Powązki Cemetery.

4. Pawiak Prison Museum

0.61 MILES

During WWII the prison that once stood here was used by the Gestapo – that's the time period that the displays in this grimly fascinating museum focus on…

5. Bohdan Lachert Mural

0.65 MILES

This 2012 mural by Anna Koźbiel and Adam Walas commemorates the modernist architect Bohdan Lachert (1900–87), who designed part of Muranów in the 1950s…

6. Willy Brandt Monument

0.69 MILES

On 7 December 1970 German chancellor Willy Brandt famously fell to his knees in front of the Ghetto Heroes Monument in a gesture of contrition for Germany…

7. Keret House

0.72 MILES

It's easy to completely miss what has to be Warsaw's narrowest building, measuring between 70cm and 122cm width. Dedicated to the Israeli writer Edgar…

8. Umschlagplatz

0.73 MILES

Here once stood the railway terminus from which Warsaw’s Jews were transported by the German military to Treblinka. The rectangular monument’s marble…