In the 16th century, the Jews of Bochnia already had their own house of prayer and a cemetery, which was probably located in the area of Kowalska, Szewska, Solna Góra, and Trudna streets. The strained Christian-Jewish relations erupted in many conflicts throughout the 15th century. Eventually, in 1605, the Jewish community was expelled from the town and forced to move to Nowy Wiśnicz. All Jewish houses, as well as the house of prayer and the cemetery, were destroyed.

It was only in 1867 that the Austrian authorities repealed the ban on Jewish settlement in Bochnia. The first Jews who came to town hailed from Wiśnicz, where they continued to bury their dead for several more years. In 1872, an epidemic broke out in Wiśnicz. As the transport of corpses between towns was prohibited to curb the spread of disease, a decision was made to establish a cemetery in Bochnia itself. On 18 November 1872, the municipal authorities officially approved the foundation of the necropolis. It was opened on a rectangular plot of land with an area of 0.65 hectare, located on Krzęczków Hill in the eastern part of Bochnia. The first burials at the site took place the following year. A pre-burial house was erected in front of the cemetery, to the right of the entrance gate.

The pre-burial house was destroyed during World War II. The Germans took away many tombstones, especially the most precious granite slabs. They also demolished the wall surrounding the necropolis. The cemetery itself was used as a mass execution site, for example of the group of nearly 300 prisoners of the Bochnia Ghetto. Among the victims were Jews from Bochnia and the neighbouring villages, as well as from Nowy Wiśnicz, Kraków, Brzesko, Krzeszowice, Mielec, and Dębica. Their bodies were thrown into a mass grave to the left of the entrance gate. The cemetery also holds individual graves and symbolic tombstones of people murdered during the war. The last burial at the cemetery in Bochnia took place in June 1945 – it was the funeral of tragically deceased Samuel Landwirth.

The cemetery area is separated from the street by an orchard where the pre-burial house used to stand before World War II. On the other side, it is adjacent to residential plots with detached houses. In the 1950s, one of the local residents, Leon Gawąd, planted rows of maple trees to mark the boundaries of the cemetery. It was not until the 1980s that the area was surrounded with a metal mesh fence with a lock gate. Information signs in Polish and Hebrew have been placed at entrance to the cemetery.

In the 1960s, a monument commemorating the Jews from the area of Bochnia and Wiśnicz murdered in the years 1939–1945 was erected at the site. Built with the use of destroyed matzevot from the cemetery, the monument was funded by Mendel Reichberg, Abusch, and Josef Hirsch.

Ca. 700 matzevot have been found in the cemetery, with the oldest ones located in its northern part. Most of them are made of sandstone – the most precious granite gravestones were plundered by the Germans. It should be emphasised that the majority of the preserved stones is in a good condition, there are practically no overturned slabs. Smooth matzevot without inscriptions have been placed at the graves where only the supporting blocks remained after the wartime plunder. Thanks to Leon Gawąd, who was taking care of the site for many years, the old tombstones have been renovated, and inscriptions on selected matzevot have been bolded by the students from the secondary art school in Nowy Wiśnicz. There are also some tombstones in a worse condition, but they have been damaged by broken branches or trees or by the passage of time (erosion).

The tombstone of rabbi and tzaddik Asher Meir Halberstam, a descendant of Chaim Halberstam – the founder of the Sanz Hasidic dynasty from Nowy Sącz – has been preserved near the entrance to the cemetery. His grave was originally marked with an ohel, but it was destroyed during World War II, only fragments of its foundations survived. Hasidim from all over the world visit the grave of Tzaddik Halberstam every year. After the war, monuments were erected next to the rabbi’s tombstone in memory of his wife, daughter, and granddaughter, who were murdered during the war.

The cemetery also includes a military section – the War Cemetery no. 313, which holds the graves of Jewish soldiers killed in World War I, marked with 28 identical matzevot with the Star of David. They are arranged in two rows, 20 in the front and eight in the back. In the centre there is a larger matzevah erected in the 1990s; it bears a plaque with inscriptions in Polish and Hebrew and was founded by Rabbi Mendel Reichberg and his sons.

For several decades after World War II, the cemetery was taken care of by Leon Gawąd, who had been mowing the grass at the site even before the war. Thanks to his efforts, the cemetery in Bochnia is one of the best maintained Jewish cemeteries in Lesser Poland. In 1989, the necropolis was entered in the register of monuments under the number A-326, dated 13 December 1989. The same year, Iwona Zawidzka of the Stanisław Fischer Museum in Bochnia took an inventory of the surviving tombstones. The findings served as the basis for her publication Miejsce święte dla wszystkich żyjących, czyli rzecz o cmentarzu żydowskim w Bochni (English: A Holy Place for All the Living – On the Jewish Cemetery in Bochnia).

Since 2012, the key to the cemetery gate has been kept in the Stanisław Fischer Museum in Bochnia.

Description copyright owner: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews