Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe. Located on Warsaw's Okopowa street and abutting the Powązki Cemetery at , the Jewish Cemetery was established in 1806 and occupies 33 hectares (83 acres) of land. The cemetery contains over 200,000 marked graves, as well as mass graves of victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. Many of these graves and crypts are overgrown, having been abandoned after the Nazi invasion of Poland and subsequent Holocaust. Although the cemetery was closed down during World War II, after the war it was reopened and a small portion of it remains active, serving Warsaw's small remaining Jewish population.
Some of the prominent Jewish citizens buried there are:
- Szymon Askenazy, archaeologist
- Mathias Bersohn, philanthropist
- Adam Czerniakow, head of the Judenrat in the Warsaw Ghetto
- Maurycy Fajans, founder of the first steamboat line on the Vistula
- Jacob Dinezon (1852-1919), writer
- Esther Rachel Kaminska (1870-1925), the "mother of Yiddish Theater", mother of Ida Kaminska
- Janusz Korczak (1878-1942), (symbolic grave), children's writer and educator
- Samuel Orgelbrand, publisher of the Universal Encyclopaedia
- Isaac Loeb Peretz, writer
- Hipolit Wawelberg, founder of Warsaw Technical College,
- Ludwik Zamenhof, doctor and inventor of Esperanto.
- Solomon Anski, writer (Solomon Zangwill Rappaport), author of "The Dybbuk"
[edit] External links
"Gesia" Jewish Cemetery Foundation - http://www.jewishcem.waw.pl/english/start.htm
