However, 17th-century municipal registers from Lublin include a number of references to individual Jews from the town, which may suggest that the ban on Jewish settlement was not rigidly enforced.

Preserved documents show that in the second half of the 18th century, the local Jews leased propination rights (production and sale of alcoholic beverages), mills, inns, and the collection of bridge tolls. The earliest mention of Jewish residents of Wąwolnica can be found in town records from 1771. Data assembled during poll tax collection in 1778 indicates that 18 Jews lived in Wąwolnica at the time.

The Jewish community was rapidly growing in size, especially after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. According to documents from 1804, the local Jews purchased of a plot of land for the purpose of erecting a synagogue. The Jewish community in Wąwolnica was initially subordinate to the Jewish community in Kazimierz Dolny, where they buried their dead. We do not know the exact date of the foundation of an independent kehilla in Wąwolnica or the establishment of the local cemetery. We can only assume that the latter followed soon after the former.

Records from 1826 mention the presence of a synagogue supervision in Wąwolnica. The Jewish cemetery was likely founded in the same period. A map published in Sankt Petersburg in 1839 labels the area as “Jewish Tombstones” – information for the publication was collected in the 1820s and 1830s. However, no trace of the necropolis can be found in the town plan issued in 1820. The matzevot preserved in the cemetery do not help in determining the exact date of its establishment, as the oldest one (which was still present at the site in 1992) dates back to 1846.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Wąwolnica was established on a hill in the village of Zarzeka. In 1870, it covered an area of 88 square rods (1,650 square meters). Its area had been enlarged twice before World War II. In 1939, it had a total area of 0.45 hectares and was fenced with a limestone wall to the east, a plank fence to the west, and barbed wire to the north and south. The entrance gate was located in the south-western corner of the necropolis.

Regular burials were held at the cemetery until the spring of 1942. During the war, it served as a burial place for people murdered in the town. In the spring of 1942, the bodies of 80 Jews shot by the Germans in the Market Square were transported to the site and laid to rest in a mass grave. It is believed that a total of ca. 300 people were buried in mass graves on the premises of the cemetery.

During World War II, the Germans vandalised the necropolis, ordering local Jews to tear out matzevot and use them in paving works, for example on a ditch running from the Market Square to the north, as well as other sites around the town (such as today’s 3 Maja Street).

Only around a dozen of the thousand Jewish inhabitants of Wąwolnica survived the Holocaust. The cemetery was neglected, steadily deteriorating and overgrowing with vegetation. It suffered further destruction after the war, with many tombstones looted by the local population.

The first field inspection at the cemetery was only carried out in 1992 on the initiative the Provincial Monuments Conservator. No standing matzevot were left at the site, there were only two overturned slabs, four supporting stones, several dozen bases, and many scattered fragments of broken tombstones. A year later, a former inhabitant of Wąwolnica, Sara Tregerman-Rytlerska, founded a monument devoted to the murdered Jews from Wąwolnica and Nałęczów and to her family. It was constructed with the use of the two fully preserved matzevot (dating back to 1846), two supporting stones, one base, and broken pieces of tombstones.

In 1997, the cemetery in Wąwolnica was entered into the register of monuments under the number A-1113, dated 15 May 1997.

The cemetery was given more attention in the first decade of the 21st century. The “Well of Remembrance” Association (Polish: Stowarzyszenie „Studnia Pamięci” ) carried out cleaning works at the site and removed the dense thicket overgrowing the grounds. In 2017, The Matzevah Foundation invited a group of students from the UK and Polish volunteers to once again clean up the cemetery area. They also carried out a non-invasive archaeological survey to find the exact location of the mass grave of Jews killed in the town in 1942. This proved impossible due to the thick shrubbery covering the investigated part of the necropolis. Excessive vegetation was removed from the necropolis and an information board was erected with financial support from the National Heritage Institute. Further maintenance works took place the following year with the participation of the Matzevah Foundation, the “Well of Remembrance” Association, and the municipal authorities of Wąwolnica.

Today, the cemetery grounds cover an area of 0.45 ha and hold only one fully preserved tombstone (in memory of Paltiel, son of Yehuda Schneider, died in 1928) and several fragments of destroyed matzevot, including an ornate supporting stone and a dozen or so bases.

Właściciel praw autorskich do opisu: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN.