Bagnowka: A Modern Jewish Cemetery on the Russian Pale

By Heidi M. Szpek

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, a traditional Jewish cemetery was established in the small town of Bagnowka, located near the urban center of Bialystok in current northeastern Poland. Though governed then by Tsarist Russia, Bialystok was still inspired by the teachings of the Torah, the Talmud, and the greater rabbinic community. Yet this was also a time of societal upheaval as a wave of modernity swept over Eastern Europe, bringing with it religious diversity, revolution, and a more secular way of life that would also impact the structure and material culture of this cemetery. Bagnowka: A Modern Jewish Cemetery on the Russian Pale tells the story of this cemetery from its founding in 1892 to its devastation during and after the Holocaust, as well as its recent restoration-in-progress. Drawing on Bagnowkas epitaphs and tombstone art, archival records, period newspapers, photographs, and more, Heidi M. Szpek reveals how this cemetery serves as a reflection of a once traditional Jewish world impacted by modernity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532001543

Heidi M. Szpek

Heidi M. Szpek is Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at Central Washington University. She currently also serves as a translator, epigrapher and consultant for Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej Polska-Izrael (Poland), assisting with restoration of the Jewish cemetery of Bagnowka in Bialystok, Poland. Dr. Szpek has contributed articles on Jewish epitaphs, Jewish heritage, and the Hebrew Bible to academic journals and to The Jewish Magazine online.

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Copyright © 2017 Heidi M. Szpek.

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are the copyright of the Author’s Personal Collection: Heidi M. Szpek and Frank J. Idzikowski.

Back cover photo © Polina Viedienkina.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-0155-0 (sc)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016919232

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 Bagnowka Beth Olam

Chapter 2 Art On Bagnowka

Chapter 3 The Epitaphic Tradition Of Bagnowka

Chapter 4 The First Decade, 1892–1902

Chapter 5 The Memorial Complex

Chapter 6 The Language Of Men

Chapter 7 The Language Accorded Women

Chapter 8 Of Children, Filial Piety And Being Old

Epilogue: Beyond Bagnowka

Glossary

Bibliography

About The Author

Dedicated to

the memory of my beloved parents:

Ervin and Dolores Szpek

"Beloveds and friends in their lives

and in their deaths, they will not be divided."

and my first mentor:

Dr. Bernard Grossfeld z"l

PREFACE

T HIS VOLUME BEGAN NEARLY A decade ago as part of a sabbatical project at Central Washington University. At that time, the project was focused mainly on the epitaphs preserved on Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery that remembered death due to violence. Since that first year of research, the project (and book vision) has undergone a variety of manifestations until settling on the final version as found in the pages ahead. Many of these earlier manifestations have been realized, at least in part, through a variety of publications, some very academic, others more casual reflections, but all commenting on the value of the Jewish epitaph in respect to enriching and remembering Jewish heritage.

The current volume is the story of a Jewish cemetery, which, by chance, I visited in the early 2000s. At that time, the city of Bialystok, in which Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery is now located, was but another Polish city to me. It wasn’t until some years later that I recalled that one of my professors, Dr. Samuel Iwry (The University of Johns Hopkins), hailed from Bialystok. My own paternal ancestry took me to the little town of Nieszawa, about an hour west of Warsaw. Yet with each yearly summer visit, Bialystok became another home to me. The people and places, which I encountered in the inscriptions on Bagnowka, became more and more familiar. Perhaps that familiarity compelled me first to tell the story of this cemetery in a more panoramic sense rather than limiting an acquaintanceship to that one horrific dimension of violence.

The research for this volume involved nearly a decade of studying the Bagnowka inscriptions, both onsite and at home, half a world away, through digital captures. But comparative research took me to Jewish cemeteries and heritage sites throughout the Bialystok region on into Lithuania and the other Baltic States of Latvia and Estonia. Much valuable information was also gained in the Bialystok State Archives, the Jewish Historical Institute-Warsaw and in scores of libraries in the United States and abroad. However, some answers I sought have eluded me by virtue of information lost through time or by the devastation of the Holocaust. At times, too, the challenge of communication in diverse languages has proven both insurmountable while yet a bit humorous. While many research queries have been answered, there is still more to be discovered about Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery. It is my hope that the story told here can be expanded as my research travels take me eastward to Belarus, Ukraine and the Crimea.

As much as research and writing are solitary endeavors, the final product owes much to a variety of people. Since this book’s inception, I owe words of appreciation to colleagues at Central Washington University (Ellensburg, WA); to colleagues at the PNSBL/AAR Regional Meetings; to fellow epitaph translators Madeleine Isenberg (California) and Sara Mages; to Centrum Obywatelskiej Bialymstoku Polska-Izrael President Lucy Lisowska and its volunteers, whom I met regularly on the cemetery each summer; to the team leaders and volunteers of ASF, who I also worked with (almost) yearly on the cemetery these last five years; to Chief Archivist Tomasz Fiedorowicz and his staff at the Bialystok State Archives; to Mark Halpern, coordinator of BialyGen, with ancestral ties in Bialystok and a tireless advocate for Jewish heritage in Bialystok; to readers of this manuscript, in part or in whole, Frank J. Idzikowski, Ervin E. Szpek, Jr., Courtney Allocca, Sasha Geise; to Tatiana Sakharov for her native proficiency in translating the cursive Old Russian records from the Bialystok Archives; as well as to those family and friends, who have listened for years to my talk about this manuscript-in-progress, especially Frank J. Idzikowski, Sara Idzikowski, Alex Idzikowski, Ervin E. Szpek, Jr., and Beth Hayes, the wordiness of this scholar fails in adequate language to express my appreciation for your varied assistance. And to my husband, Frank J. Idzikowski, who in addition to the above-named duties, has also served as photographer, travelling companion, driver, beast-of-burden and security, the future opportunity to continue these duties … eastward to Taganrog, expresses the depth of my appreciation.

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Pale of Settement, ca. 1855.

(© Courtesy of The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.)

image2.jpg%20(3)%20cropped.jpg

Bialystok, 1937.

(Bialystok: ilustrowany informatory i plan miasta, 1937. Podlaska Digital Library.)

Jewish cemeteries are labelled cmen(tarz) zydowski with an ‘L’.

(Left to upper right) Cholera Cemetery, Old Beth Olam, Ghetto Cemetery (north of Old Beth Olam on Polna Street), and Bagnowka Beth Olam.

image3.jpg%20cropped.jpg

Detail of Bialystok town center, 1937.

(Bialystok: ilustrowany informatory i plan miasta, 1937. Podlaska Digital Library.)

Jewish cemeteries are labelled cmen(tarz) zydowski with an ‘L’.

(Left to right) Cholera Cemetery, Old Beth Olam,

and Ghetto Cemetery (north of Old Beth Olam on Polna Street)

INTRODUCTION

I N THE LAST DECADES OF the nineteenth century, in the district of Bagnowka, in present-day Bialystok, Poland, three cemeteries were established adjacent to one another: cmentarz rzymsko-katolicki, cmentarz prawoslawny and cmentarz zydowski, the Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish cemeteries, respectively. Nearby also stands cmentarz ewangelicki, the Protestant cemetery, and cmentarze miejski , the City cemetery. The district of Bagnowka (pronounced bug-nov-kuh ) was then only a small village, located on the periphery of the burgeoning urban center of Bialystok. Its name Bagnowka (Bagnówce in Polish), meaning a deforested expanse, ¹ offers a visual sense of the setting in which this village was situated, and the value of this open expanse for a cemetery complex. Historically, Jewish and Christian cemeteries were located at opposite ends of a town, each within their respective quarters. Thus, placement of a Jewish cemetery in such close proximity to three Christian cemeteries was a radical move even though now necessitated by Tsarist legislation. Bagnowka: A Modern Jewish Cemetery on the Russian Pale is the story of this Jewish cemetery, radical not only for its location but also because of its nature. Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery began as a traditional, rabbinic cemetery when Bialystok and Congress Poland were still part of the Russian Pale of Settlement. The term Pale of Settlement is the designation given to a vast region, established in 1791 under Catherine the Great, in which Jews were permitted to settle. As Poland moved to regain its independence (1918), this cemetery was transformed by the historical processes of its time into a quasi-modern cemetery. Modernism now confronted traditionalist practices in respect to burial patterns, styles of tombstones and their art, vernacular languages, and the epitaphic tradition. During the Holocaust, burials nearly ceased on this cemetery. Post-Holocaust burials were also scarce, owing to Bialystok’s decimated Jewish population. Of those Bialystok Jews, who survived the Holocaust and returned to their city, the majority emigrated amidst the resurgence of anti-Semiticism in 1968. During the Holocaust and until recent years, this cemetery, too, was a victim of theft, vandalism and neglect. Yet recent documentation and restoration of what does remain still reveal the traditional and modern dynamics of Jewish Bialystok as reflected in this religious institution.

A Brief History of Jewish Bialystok

Bialystok is situated beside the Bialy River, which encouraged its founding and the economy of the other towns along its meanderings. This river also lends its name bialy to the city of Bialystok, meaning white slope (Polish biały, stok). Established in 1322, Bialystok became the largest city in northeastern Poland as well as the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship, and a major center in the later Grodno Gubernya. The designation Grodno Gubernya refers to the former Imperial Russian administrative region that encompassed northeastern Poland, northwestern (current day) Belarus and a small portion of southwestern Lithuania. The gubernya system was created by Imperial Russia in the early eighteenth century and adapted for Poland while under Russian control in the early 1800s. Between World War I and World War II, the area formerly known as the Grodno Gubernya held 15 percent (ca. 194,100) of the Jews in Poland, the highest concentration of Jews in any gubernya.² Just prior to the onset of World War II, Bialystok, the largest city within the Polish side of this former gubernya, contained the largest percentage of Jews in any Polish city. Approximately 52 percent of Bialystok’s population was Jewish (ca. forty thousand).³

The first Jewish emigrants to this region of the Grodno Gubernya arrived in the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, but it was not until the late fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries that they were officially allowed to establish settlements. Thus, though Bialystok was founded in 1322, the earliest record of Jewish settlement in this city dates to 1588.⁴ By 1658, records indicate that a small Jewish community already existed in the village of Bialystok, confirming an earlier settlement.⁵ Bialystok’s Jewish community, however, was subordinate to the regional jurisdiction of the Jewish community in the nearby city of Tykocin.⁶ Thus, the authority of the Tykocin kehillah (administrative council) regulated the establishment of Jewish cemeteries within the city of Bialystok. Tykocin’s Jewish cemetery may be the place where the first Jews of Bialystok were buried.⁷

Early in the period known as the Polish-Lithuanian Confederation or the Kingdom of Poland (ca. sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), nearly thirty towns (with a Jewish population) in the Grodno Gubernya within Poland were finally established. Coterminus with this establishment, structures of Jewish material culture began to appear. Synagogues and houses of study were built, often constructed out of wood in a distinctively Polish style. Likewise, land use was granted for cemeteries. For example, the earliest Jewish cemetery was established in Tykocin (1522), and (what would be) the largest shtetl (small town) cemetery in Poland was established in Krynki (1662). Each community, likewise, had its own administrative institution (kehillah) that was responsible for overseeing the Jewish community in its daily regulations as well as in the Jewish community’s relations with the larger Polish governing body.⁸ In this manner of governance, the Jews of the Grodno Gubernya were distinct as compared to Jewish communities elsewhere. During the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, Poland, in general, maintained a distinctively unique atmosphere of ethnic and religious tolerance. The Jews of the Grodno Gubernya, as those throughout Poland, in general, flourished in respect to commerce, agriculture and cultural endeavors, as well as demographically.⁹ This so-called Golden Age of Polish Jewry did not last in respect to self-administration. Jewish history, intertwined with Polish history, was impacted by the subsequent political maneuvers of Russia, Prussia and Austria (1792–1918) and then of Independent Poland (1918–1939). Thereafter, for the Jews of what was once the Grodno Gubernya within Poland, occupation and deportation came first from the Soviet Union under Communist rule (1939–1941) to be followed by the near total annihilation during the Holocaust under Nazi rule (1941–1944). Those Jews, who survived the Holocaust and were liberated by the Red Army in 1944, subsequently, again found themselves under the governance of the Soviet Union (1944–1991).

The unique resources and geography of the Grodno Gubernya also influenced Jewish efforts in commerce, agriculture and even political intrigue. From the seventeenth century until 1795, Polish historian Anatol Leszczynski records that the main sources of livelihood for the Jews in this region were crafts, inn keeping, taprooms, foreign, far reaching and local trade, credit-monetary operations and leases.¹⁰ Occupations and professions were related to these livelihoods, to include, for example, tradesmen, textile and lumber entrepreneurs and workers, tailors, butchers, and bakers.¹¹ Bialystok had the highest number of Jews in the region, who were involved in these occupations, with only Tykocin close behind. Moreover, in comparison with Christian livelihoods, Jews were more active in the textile-garment industry, the food industry, and services-in-kind. These trends were influenced by Jewish ritual laws (halakhah).¹² Thus, by necessity, Jews held the majority of positions as tailors, butchers and bakers, in order to preserve halakhic (religious) regulations, related to dress and food. By the mid-nineteenth century, Jewish enterprise, in particular, saw the founding of a major textile industry centered in Bialystok, with related shops and businesses. Between the two World Wars, the rural areas beyond Bialystok embraced kibbutz-style (collective) farming techniques and community-life, as training for those Jewish youth preparing for life in Palestine. In the Grodno Gubernya within Poland, too, were located the dense primeval Bialowieza Forest and the Pripet Marshes, both of which served as the perfect topography for the largest bases of anti-Nazi Jewish partisans during World War II.

When the first Jews settled in Bialystok in 1658, two authorities held sway—Polish nobility and the Jewish kehillah of Tykocin.¹³ The small village of Bialystok was governed first by Stefan Czarniecki, the Polish nobleman to whom King Jan Kazimierz had bequeathed the land beside the Bialy River. Dominion of Bialystok passed to Count Jan Klemens Branicki in 1703. As Branicki established his permanent royal residence in Bialystok, he invited Jews to settle further on his lands, bringing commerce and trade. Though granted town rights in 1729 by Branicki, the Jews of Bialystok religiously still remained under the Jewish authority of Tykocin (Yiddish Tiktin). In town records, Bialystok was called Bialystok-upon-Tiktin, indicating its subsidiary status to this regional Jewish seat of authority, established in 1522. In 1749, Bialystok was awarded town status by Polish King Augustus III; in 1765, Count Branicki gave Jews rights equal to Bialystok’s Christian citizens. Yet the Jewish community of Bialystok still remained subservient to the kehillah of Tykocin. As early as 1718, the Tykocin kehillah had allowed Bialystok to construct a beth midrash (house of study) and mikveh (ritual bath). Yet it would be decades before a synagogue, a poor house, and a cemetery were built in Bialystok and before the Jewish community could break away from Tykocin’s religious authority. On the death of Count Branicki in 1771, Bialystok was one of six regional cities sold to the King of Prussia. During the period of Prussian control, Jewish Bialystok finally broke away from the authority of Tykocin, becoming the district capital. Freedom from the Tykocin kehillah, however, simultaneously saw anti-Jewish legislation from Prussian authorities, with legislation that sought to limit the number of Jews settling in Bialystok and to restrict the number of professions in which Jews could engage. Prussian rule was lost under Napoleonic rule, but by 1807 the city was annexed to Russia as Russia proved victorious in the Franco-Russian War and in keeping with the terms of the Tilsit Peace Conference. The Jews of Bialystok remained under Russian control until the First World War, which continued and intensified the restrictive measures enacted under Prussian rule. Jews could not marry, change occupations or residences without permits; they were required to adopt surnames. Russification of the calendar, of surnames and even of Jewish educational institutions, from the cheder (children’s Hebrew and religious school) to the gymnasium levels, was imposed. In the cities, Christian-Jewish competition was encouraged by the Russians, but in the rural areas oppressive measures were enacted against the peasantry. Jewish response was to flee to the city. Thus, the years 1825 to 1835 and again in 1845 saw such migration of Jews from the countryside and neighboring villages to Bialystok. The result of this movement was a tremendous increase in Jewish commerce, especially the textile industry. Census records of 1878 indicate that Jewish Bialystok had over twenty thousand inhabitants. By 1897, two decades later, the Jewish population had nearly doubled, comprising 64 percent of the total population. Moreover, Jews dominated the city both in business and commerce, as employers and employees. Earlier (1832 and 1835), Russian legislation was passed, allowing Jews to become honorary citizens, contingent on exceptional contributions to education, business or commerce. Such legislation increased Jewish relations with Russia but also brought animosity with their Polish neighbors. After the failed Polish Uprising against Russia in 1863, Russification intensified and Jews strengthened ties with both Russia and Germany in business and commerce.¹⁴ Thus, in the centuries prior to the turn of the twentieth century, anti-Semitism took the form of restrictions and subjugation to ruling authorities, be these authorities the Jewish kehillah of Tykocin, early Polish nobility, or the machinations of Prussia, Napoleonic France or the first years of Tsarist Russian rule. As Bialystok moved into the twentieth century, anti-Semitism now added physical violence to its modus operandi as evidenced not only by archival photographs, death certificates, and personal testimonies but also by phrases recording physical violence within the tombstone inscriptions on Bagnowka Beth Olam (cemetery).

Two Men, Two Backgrounds, Two Visions

Within this history of Jewish Bialystok, two men stand distinct: Rabbi Shmuel Mohilewer and historian Abraham Samuel Herszberg. Their lives reflect the impact of modernity on a traditionalist world, including the cemetery of Bagnowka. Both men were in attendance, too, at the dedication of Bagnowka Beth Olam in the first days of 1892.

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Rabbi Shmuel Mohilewer was born in 1824, in the shtetl of Glembokie, northeast of Vilna, a mithnagdic (traditionalist)¹⁵ community that would eventually be inclined toward Hasidism.¹⁶ While pursuing ordination at the famed mithnagdic yeshivah of Volozhin, he maintained the traditionalism of his youth.¹⁷ After serving as rabbi in such communities as Suwalki and Radom, Mohilewer became Chief Rabbi of Bialystok from 1883 until his death in 1898. In Bialystok, Mohilewer established a spiritual center, one that synthesized his early mithnagdic upbringing and education with the movements inspired by the events of his day. The Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) had finally reached Eastern Europe, infusing some factions of the Jewish community with a zest for exploring secular subjects and acknowledging the freedom to think as an individual. Amidst this intellectual upheaval, the first major wave of pogroms struck the Jewish communities in Russia (1881–1883). Bialystok was spared this wave of pogroms; Suwalki—where Mohilewer had earlier served as rabbi, was not. The epitaphs in Suwalki’s memorial wall, all that remains of this cemetery, record the violence he witnessed. For Mohilewer, the impact of the pogroms awoke in him a desire to support immigration to Palestine. Thus, he became one of the founding rabbis of Ḥibat Tsiyon love of Zion, a pre-Zionist Jewish national movement.¹⁸ Though advocating cooperation between mithnagdic and secular Jews of his day, Mohilewer still engaged in debate tempered with an ideology of cooperation that marked religious Zionism or national Orthodoxy.¹⁹ Mohilewer’s active participation in the causes of his time brought him to conferences throughout Eastern Europe, thereby increasing his prominence while promulgating, in particular, his version of Zionist ideology. In his recollections of Bialystok’s past, renowned Bialystok journalist, Pesach Kaplan, wrote of Mohilewer’s characteristic boldness, which ignited him to make contact with the French-Jewish magnate, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, winning him over to the great Zionist ideal, and creating a place for thousands of pioneers to work in the land of Jewish hope and aspiration.²⁰

Though Mohilewer’s home was the breeding ground²¹ for the Ḥibat Tsiyon Zionist movement, it was also a place of warm embrace for Bialystok’s visitors. This Rabbi, who positioned himself at center amidst traditionalists, secularists and Zionists, was still much beloved by these same individuals. Der Bialystoker Yizkor Buch (Memorial Book) preserves one such visitor’s recollection of his visit with Rabbi Mohilewer:

In 1897, I traveled to many Jewish cities and towns in Poland and Galicia doing research. At that time, I had the opportunity to meet in Bialystok with Rabbi Szmuel Mohilewer, who was by then a world-renowned personality.

I entered a dignified residence in one of Bialystok’s quiet streets. An elderly man with a long beard greeted me warmly … He offered me a stool and the elderly rabbi, dressed in a black silk robe, sat down. We began our discussion with the issue of Jewish colonization in Palestine, Zionism and the Jewish colonial bank (which helped Jews settle in Israel). I could not take my eyes off Rabbi Mohilewer’s majestic appearance. His facial expression suddenly brightened when he spoke of Jewish settling in Israel. Those clever eyes–which earlier were tired–now shone with the fire of youth. A smile appeared on his lips as he talked about his hopes and dreams, of those who would continue the work he began. He discussed not himself but the young people, the future of our nation. In response to one of my observations he said, I believe the Zionist idea will flourish as a grass-roots Jewish movement. … At that point, I left Rabbi Mohilewer’s presence. Later, walking through the streets of Bialystok and talking to various classes of Jews—workers, merchants and plain people—I realized how universally beloved and esteemed this elderly leader was.²²

About fifteen years before this visitor to Mohilewer, another visitor, a man that became the renowned Bialystok historian of Jewish history, Abraham Samuel Herszberg, made this city his home. On arriving in Bialystok in 1881, he wrote in his article, entitled One Hundred Years:

The pacesetter of the intelligentsia was the Talmudic scholar, who possessed vast halachic erudition and set a high moral example. The scholar spent his free time studying the Torah, distancing himself as much as possible from the alien technical culture of Western Europe. His goal was to be competent in Jewish law.

The scholar, therefore, not the rich man, enjoyed the greatest prestige within the Jewish community. Material possessions and economic power did not confer nobility; knowledge did, coupled with clean living based on Torah principles.²³

Herszberg concluded this article with observations of Jewish life in Bialystok, less than half a century after his arrival:

In summary, I witnessed spectacular changes in the organized life of Bialystoker Jews. At first its focus was the beth ha-midrash [house of study], and later the cultural and political circles such as the Haskalah movement and the Ḥibat Zion. In the last decades, the culture groups have receded, supplanted by political parties. All ideologies are represented in Bialystok, from extreme right to left.²⁴

Born in the winter of 1860 into an aristocratic family in Kolne, a shtetl in the Lomza Gubernya, about 160 kilometers west of Bialystok, at the age of five, Herszberg’s family moved to Warsaw. In Warsaw, his grandfather, Reb (Mr.) Zusman Jebtz owned a large house with a tobacco factory, and its own beth midrash for family and relatives. Herszberg’s father, Reb Israel, managed the factory while he himself was exposed to the scholarly intellectual atmosphere that prevailed in his father’s house. He studied Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), Gemara (Mishnah commentary), Rashi’s commentaries, Tosafot (medieval commentaries), and foreign languages—German, Russian, and Polish. While the atmosphere of Bialystok on his arrival matched that of his father’s home in Warsaw, he had moved to Bialystok because of the influence of Rabbi Mohilewer and Bialystok’s place as the center of the Ḥibat Tsiyon.²⁵ In 1899, Herszberg travelled to Israel to observe the first Zionist settlements. This visit to Israel became the topic of his first publications, which included a sharp critique of Baron Rothschild’s ideology.²⁶ A review of Herszberg’s writings finds publications that reflect his first studies in Talmud Torah, and then books and articles on Zionist ideologies and movements that he encountered in Israel, Bialystok and regionally.²⁷ His life parallels the transformation of Bialystok and of its Jewish inhabitants, about which he wrote, and in which both Herszberg and Mohilewer participated, a transformation reflected in the material culture still extant on Bagnowka Beth Olam today.

Cemetery and Tombstone Studies, and Historiography

In the early twentieth century, Polish historian Mejer Balaban delivered a most telling condemnation of Jewish epitaphs in his book Dzielnica Zydowska. Jej dzieje i zabytki (The Jewish District: Through History and Monuments). In this slim volume, he offered a brief characterization of the Jewish epitaph, noting that by the sixteenth century, the Jewish epitaph like its ornamental style was blatantly baroque, becoming overloaded with epithets, metaphoric and figurative twists of phrases, so much so that by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries epitaphs could only be read with difficulty.²⁸ Nonetheless, in the early 1900s, Jewish tombstones were still the subject of research, with focus on their artistic qualities and historic value as revealed most often in genealogical details.²⁹ In the scholarship of the century to follow, Balaban’s characterizations were repeated, as in Monika Krajewska’s Tribe of Stones; however, she did add that the epitaphs may reflect the hoped for attributes of the deceased and the system of values accepted by the Jewish community in Pre-War Poland.³⁰ Contemporary scholarship has also failed (or forgotten) that Balaban’s comments were brief statements without supporting commentary. Also forgotten are the intriguing circumstances that may have prompted him to promulgate his initial condemnation. In an open letter of 1892, maskil Simon Dubnow (1860–1941) delivered a plea to the maskilim (intellectuals) and mithnagdim (traditionalists) of his day to engage in documenting and writing the woefully lacking past history of Yiddish civilization as a means to unite past history with emerging nationalistic inclinations. Among the records to be collected, Dubnow asked that epitaphs from old matzevoth (tombstones) be copied.³¹ For Dubnow, gathering the records of past historiography not only preserved past Jewish history but also, he opined, through such records, historiographers would find a portent of history to come. During this period, Bialystok historians Abraham Samuel Herszberg (Jewish) and Jan Glinka (Polish) also contributed to recording information on Bialystok’s Jewish cemeteries.³²

Post-Holocaust Poland under Communism saw limited research on Jewish tombstones and cemeteries, more often witnessing the devastation or vandalism of Jewish cemeteries. A few scholarly publications (in Polish) did emerge during the Communist era, whose focus was on cemeteries in southern or western Poland.³³ A few individuals privately engaged in photographing and (occasionally) mapping select cemeteries.³⁴ With the fall of Communism, a steady rise of research on Jewish tombstones and cemeteries began.³⁵ In 1993, The Survey of Historic Jewish Monuments in Poland was completed by Samuel Gruber and Phyllis Myer. This report to the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad detailed the status of both cemeteries and synagogues throughout Poland, including the cemeteries of Bialystok.³⁶ At this time, too, Polish scholars took the forefront in documenting such Jewish cemeteries as Pilicy, Krakow, Lesku, Tarnow, Slawkowie, Dabrowie Gorniczej, and Miedzyrzecu Podlaskim, with extensive articles that highlighted specific topics arising from documentation. These volumes provided historical background for both the respective cemeteries and communities, detailed empirical data regarding the stone, size and type of monuments, epigraphic details indicative of each cemetery, lists of epitaph abbreviations, cemetery maps, extensive bibliographies and, most significantly, individual images of each extant matzevah (tombstone), its inscription in Hebrew and a translation in Polish.³⁷ At this time, also, publication of photographic essays ensued, with modest introductions, which sought to preserve through images a world now lost.³⁸

In keeping with these trends in Jewish cemetery research, studies related to Bialystok’s cemeteries and Bagnowka Jewish cemetery, in particular, were undertaken beginning in the mid-1980s by Polish historian Tomasz Wisniewski. Wisniewski contributed the required cemetery data to The Survey of Historic Jewish Monuments in Poland for Bialystok’s cemeteries. He also participated in the first attempt to document Bagnowka in the early 1980s; from 2007 to 2014, his photographic efforts on Bagnowka were disseminated online.³⁹ His earlier article Cmentarze Zydowskie W Bialymstoku, offered a first attempt to delineate the history and nature of Bialystok’s Jewish cemeteries.⁴⁰ Bialystok’s Jewish cemeteries were also referenced in his guidebook Jewish Bialystok and Surroundings, with brief historical information, and his later volume Nieistniejace Mniejsze Cmentarze Ẓydowskie: Rekonstrukcja Atlantydy (Small, Non-Existent Jewish Cemeteries: Reconstructing Atlantis), a photographic essay with complementary explanations.⁴¹

More recently, scholarship on Jewish cemeteries has taken new directions, exploring the greater significance of the empirical data gleaned from documentation. Michael Nosonovsky’s Hebrew Inscriptions from Ukraine and Former Soviet Union, established precise categories for analyzing Jewish epitaphs and demonstrated that Hebrew epitaphs also serve as a significant source for exploring Hebrew literature.⁴² Aviva Ben-Ur and Rachel Frankel’s Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries and Synagogue of Suriname continued this trend of documentation and preservation, while examining the specific artistic and epigraphic details of tombstones, the placement of tombstones within a cemetery, and the structure and placement of the cemetery itself.⁴³ Their complementary essays, however, move toward engaging the language and artistry of the tombstone with wider topics and the growing scholarship related to Jewish funeral practices, rituals and attitudes.⁴⁴

In 2007, I also began researching new directions in the study of the Jewish tombstone and in the epitaph, in particular. In that year, my article ‘And in Their Death They Were Not Separated’: Aesthetics of Jewish Tombstones, influenced by the aesthetic theory of Theodor Adorno, examined the aesthetics of the Jewish tombstone as an expression of Jewish culture and history.⁴⁵ A conference presentation at the Jagiellionian University, entitled, He Walked upon a Wooden Leg: Epitaphs and Acrostic Poems on Jewish Tombstones, took up the question of the value of the Jewish epitaph for Jewish history and culture.⁴⁶ Then followed a series of casual articles in the Jewish Magazine online, dedicated to considering the value of the Jewish epitaph. Two additional journal articles, published in East European Jewish Affairs, focused on the first decade of epitaphs in the Bagnowka corpus and the memorial epitaphs in this same corpus, are further developed in