| Cemetery Description: |
Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery was the last and largest Jewish cemetery established in (now) northeastern Bialystok, Poland. It functioned from 1892-1969 with some concurrent burials with the Old Rabbinic Cemetery at the city center during its first decade of operation. Once 40 acres with the potential of 35,000 burials, now 30 acres and possibly 5-6000 tombstones remain. At present, nearly 3400 inscriptions have been documented. Ongoing restoration by the US-based Bialystok Cemetery Restoration Project (BJCP) (www.bialystokcemeteryrestoration.org) and Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej Polska-Izrael w Bialymstoku (https://bialystok.jewish.org.pl/en/) in the next few years will return the last extant records (c. 2000) to the historic record. The current Bagnowka Burial Registry with images and further information on this cemetery are available at www.jewishepitaphs.org. Records in this registry derive from restoration efforts by the BJCP and from the earlier documentation project by Heidi M. Szpek, Ph.D. Emerita Professor, Central Washington University WA/USA, Dr. Tomasz Wisniewski, Bialystok historian/filmmaker (www.bagnowka.pl) ; and translator Sara Mages. Publications related to Bagnowka Cemetery by Dr. Szpek are also referenced or published in full at www.jewishepitaphs.org, including Bagnowka: A Modern Jewish Cemetery on the Russian Pale (iUniverse, 2017); as well as at http://www.jewishmag.com/ under Search: Szpek. |
