Having been expelled from Knyszyn, the Jews settled on the royal land outside town limits, establishing their own suburb called Ogrodniki. At first, the community comprised only several families, but by the end of the 18th century, it had grown to include 200 people. Around 1705, the Jews arranged a burial site at the site of former royal ponds, north of the road to Chraboły.

In the 18th century, the restrictions on Jewish settlement were eased and the number of Jews living in Knyszyn began to increase. In 1807, 308 Jewish residents were recorded in the town, and in 1879 – as many as 1,878.

The local Jewish community started to shrink at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1921, there were 1,235 Jews living in Knyszyn. By that time, the cemetery had started to fill up and hardly any place was left for further burials. Ca. 1925, the community began to look for a potential site to establish a new cemetery. Its first choice was a plot on the Królowej Bony Hill, but the Christian townsmen opposed the decision. The community then changed its plans and instead decided to enlarge the old cemetery with the plot adjacent to it from the south-eastern side. The burial complex thus came to have two easily discernible sections. The older part was located on dikes and pond hollows, with the graves scattered around without any particular order (no alleys, division into male and female quarters, or quarters of distinguished individuals). The newer sector, meanwhile, was better arranged, with graves placed in clearly marked rows. Before 1939, there was a building situated right beside the necropolis. It served as a pre-burial house or the caretaker’s living quarters.

The cemetery remained in use until World War II. In November 1942, during the liquidation of the Knyszyn Ghetto, the Germans murdered 74 people in the town. They were buried in a mass grave in the cemetery after the deportation action had ended. In 2012, the grave was commemorated with a stone bearing a memorial plaque which previously had hung on the building of the Municipality Office.

World War II marked the beginning of the decline of the necropolis. The most valuable tombstones continued to be plundered from the site over the following post-war years. In 1990, Tomasz Wiśniewski, Iwona Plichta-Wiśniewska, and Józef Maroszek took an inventory of the remaining matzevot at the behest of the Provincial Monument Conservator in Białystok. They recorded 620 matzevot and 66 supporting stones in the old part of the cemetery and 12 matzevot and 16 supporting stones in the new part. The oldest identified tombstone dates back to 1794.

Most of the surviving tombstones found in the cemetery are made of conglomerate, less frequently of sandstone or granite. Some have unusual shapes or sizes, bear unique decorations or convex inscriptions, while others are simply uncut field stones.

Regular cleaning works at the cemetery have been organised since the beginning of the 21st century. They are carried out on the initiative of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage (FODŻ) in cooperation with local institutions and activists. The initiative is accompanied by meetings of young people from Poland and Israel. In 2011, the FODŻ erected a roadside signpost and an information board by the necropolis with the support of the Michael H. Traison Fund for Poland.

The Knyszyn cemetery covers an area of 2.82 hectares, which makes it one of the largest preserved Jewish burial sites in Podlasie. It is a truly unique historical monument, not only because it bears testament to the vibrant local Jewish community, but also because it helped preserve fragments of the royal pond complex from the times of King Sigismund II Augustus. The Knyszyn necropolis was entered into the register of monuments under the number A-629, dated 19 November 2019.

A list of identified tombstones from the cemetery is available on the website of the Foundation for Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries: https://cemetery.jewish.org.pl/list/c_71 [accessed: 21 September 2020].

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