The Jewish cemetery in Hrubieszow was established in the 16th century and operated until the outbreak of World War II. The last known burial took place in 1941. Between the two world wars, the cemetery covered an area of 31 dunams (approximately 7.7 acres), included a purification house, and was surrounded by a wooden fence.
During World War II, the cemetery became a slaughterhouse for the Jews of Hrubieszow. In 1942 and 1943, the Germans murdered approximately 500 Jews from Hrubieszow in a killing pit within the cemetery, and interred their bodies in a mass grave.
During the war, the cemetery suffered extensive damage. Gravestones were taken by the Germans and used to pave town squares and roads. Towards the end of the war, the Germans used the southern part of the cemetery area as a road. After the war, residents used the remaining gravestones as building materials.
In 1945–1946, after the war ended, a group of Jews retrieved the bodies of victims from mass graves around the town and reburied them in the cemetery. The cemetery remained neglected until the 1970s, and warehouses were built in its southern section.
In the 1970s, a memorial was erected in the cemetery by Avraham Sher, a native of the town, in memory of the Jews of Hrubieszow. By the 1980s, there were hardly any traces of the original gravestones, and the cemetery had become an overgrown field. A joint decision was made by the community of Jewish emigrants from Hrubieszow and the then-mayor, Kazimierz Łukiewicz, to renovate and preserve the cemetery, and to establish another memorial. In collaboration with local entities, about 100 fragments of Jewish gravestones, previously used for paving and construction, were collected from around the town and returned to the cemetery. These fragments were incorporated into a memorial erected in 1997, designed by Abraham Zilberstein, a native of Hrubieszow, in memory of the Jews of Hrubieszow who were murdered in the Holocaust.
Today, the cemetery is enclosed by a fence, covers an area of approximately 2.5 dunams (0.62 acres), and contains only a few gravestones. The oldest gravestones date back to the 17th century, some of which are well-preserved, with decorative carvings and inscriptions in Hebrew.
The key to the cemetery gate is available at the municipal company’s offices on Krucha Street 20 (near the cemetery entrance).
The gate of the cemetery in Hrubieszow
The Jewish cemetery
Holocaust survivors from Hrubieszow who removed bodies from a mass grave so that they could be given a dignified reburial, 1945.
