How to search for gravestones in the database of the Jewish cemetery in Czestochowa
The cemetery was mapped by students, teachers and graduates of the Reut High School in Jerusalem, led by educator Ms. Dina Weiner and in collaboration with The Association of Czestochowa Jews in Israel and their Chairman Alon Goldman. This documentation of the Jewish cemetery in Czestochowa was carried out for 8 years (2007-2016). You can learn about the work on the gallery page, blog and testimonials on this site.
The work included drawing the tombstones and photographing them. In 2019, the entire database was translated into English by the educator and project manager, Ms. Dina Weiner, which enables a bilingual search in Hebrew and English. On this site, you can use the search engine developed by Reut High School graduate Hagai Hellman (who maintains the site voluntarily) to find tombstones from the database in an easy and simple way.
Out of about 15,000 gravestones that were in the cemetery before the WW2, about 4,500 gravestones were found and mapped. All the rest did not survive the weather, were displaced / destroyed as a result of acts of vandalism by the Germans during the war who used them as fortification materials or by the Poles in the post-war period who used them as building materials.
The cemetery is divided into plots with each plot containing up to 9 rows (except plot 8, explanation below) – see the cemetery map.
In each plot, the tombstones are given a number according to their location in the plot and according to their particular row. In this way, each grave receives a number of four or five digits:
Four-digit Structure:
The first digit on the left represents the number of the plot.
The second digit on the left represents the row number within the plot (the numbering of lines within the plot always starts from the gate).
The third and fourth digits represent the number of the tombstone within the row.
For example, if the tombstone number is 6122, this means it is in plot 6, row 1, and the tombstone position is number 22 in that row.
Five-digit Structure:
The first two digits to the left represent the number of the plot.
The third digit on the left represents the row number within the plot (the numbering of lines within the plot always starts from the gate).
The fourth and fifth digits on the left represent the number of the tombstone within that row.
For example, if the number of a tombstone is 10412 this means that it is in plot 10, row 4, and the tombstone position is number 12 in that row.
Plot 8
Plot 8 is the plot located in the plaza in the center of the cemetery. The plot begins immediately where the path ends and the large plaza begins and the plot includes tombstones on both sides of the path. In this particular plot, the mapping was done slightly differently as follows:
Left side of the path – All the tombstones on the left side of the path (in the narrow strip between the path and the fence) receive a number in the 80XX series, whereby the number 8001 starts from the first tombstone or its remains are located at the exit from the path to the square. The assigned numbers increase as you go along the path to the end of the cemetery.
Right side of the path – Due to its size, this plot has four-digit and five-digit grave numbers in accordance with the principles described above. The numbering starts at 81XX in the first row as soon as it exits from the path to the plaza, and ends with the last row numbering 812XX. In the plot to the right of the path there is no continuity of the graves in a line in the row and so each grave was assigned a number based on where it is estimated to be located on the ground.
Counting the tombstones is always done from left to right when reading the tombstone, and includes broken/missing or unreadable tombstones that are not documented in the database.
There are cases where the tombstone was not exactly in the line with the row, so it received a decimal point number. For example, 1213.1 is near 1213.
In 2019, Mr. Alon Goldman, chairman of the Association of Czestochowa Jews in Israel, integrated the Gidonim Mapping Database with other mappings performed previously by Benjamin Ya’ari and the Polish historian Wiesław Paszkowski, and for each tombstone page in the orientation table at the bottom, numbers were added: identity number according to Ya’ari and identity number according to Paszkowski.
Yaari ID – This is the identifying number given by Benjamin Ya’ari to a tombstone in a mapping he carried out in 1997. There is a partial mapping of the cemetery appearing at: http://www.zchor.org/CZESTOCH.HTM
Paszkowski ID – Mr. Wiesław Paszkowski is a historian working at the documentation center of the Czestochowa Municipal Museum. For many years he has been researching and mapping the Jewish Cemetery in Czestochowa together with his wife Urszula and his son. As part of his work, in some cases, he also documented additional details about the deceased and his family as found in the National Archives in Czestochowa and other sources. The fruits of his many years of work and extensive information he has gathered have been published in the book “The Jewish Cemetery of Czestochowa – Volume 1”, published by the Czestochowa Municipal Museum in 2012. Since the publication of the book, he has accumulated more information. The identifying number according to the Pashkovsky system is the “Address” of the tombstone in his mapping and indicates that there is the possibility of further information in his possession.
Mr. Wiesław Paszkowski’s many years of work are greatly appreciated and are an invaluable contribution to the documentation of the Czestochowa Jewish Cemetery. As part of our collaboration with him, we have been assisted by his database in the correction of and in the completion of missing details in our documentation and for this we are very grateful to him.
Where any Paszkowski ID number appears, you can check with Mr. Paszkowski by e-mail to see if he possesses additional information: oddc@o2.pl Or by email: czestochowajewsinisrael@gmail.com
As part of his work, Mr. Paszkowski has written articles in Polish on the mass graves in the cemetery, articles which have been translated into English by Mr. Andrew Rajcher and into Hebrew by Mr. Alon Goldman. These articles can be found in this link or in the “Galleries / Mass Graves” tab.
We would like to thank the historian Mr. Wiesław Paszkowski, a true friend, for sharing with us his vast knowledge of the history of the Jews of Czestochowa and the Jewish Cemetery, for his many years of cooperation – Thank you dear friend!
Symbolic Tombstones – Some of the tombstones found are symbolic tombstones built after the war by family members who went through the horrors of the Shoah in the Czestochowa Ghetto, in the Hassag, in concentration camps or in various hiding places and later returned to Czestochowa and on these tombstones were commemorated the names of their families who perished in the Holocaust.
You can search in Hebrew/English by first name, last name or tombstone number.
Plot 19
In this plot is a list of tombstones that were found in a mapping made by the historian Paszkowski and appear in his book and were not found in the mapping made by the Gidonim. Their location can be located according to its ID number and the map found in the book.
Plot 20 (Work in Progress)
The cemetery records did not survive the Holocaust and there is no complete list of all the deceased buried in the cemetery since it opened for burial in 1800. In the mapping work we found many graves where the tombstone is missing and we were not able to identify who was buried there. At the initiative of Alon Goldman, of The Association of Czestochowa Jews in Israel, in this section documented the names of people who died in Czestochowa and no tombstone were found in their name and the place of their burial is unknown. The documentation was made according to an obituary for their death that was published in one of the local newspapers in Czestochowa. In some cases there is no information on the exact date of death and the date is the date of publication of the ad in the newspaper. The number of the tombstone has no significance in terms of location and is given for administrative purposes only. In the future, an effort will be made to complete missing information about the deceased.
We would like to thank Mr. Alon Goldman, Chairman of the Association of Czestochowa Jews in Israel, in whom we found a true partner in our challenging activity at the Czestochowa Jewish Cemetery. We thank him for his many years of mobilizing the resources that enabled us to carry out the work, his support throughout the years, and his extraordinary effort to improve the information database and to integrate already existing databases.
Contact the site administrators – If you have an old picture of a tombstone you want to add, or if you have found an error or if you possess other information about the tombstone, you can contact us directly by clicking on the link at the end of the tombstone page.
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