SOKOLOW PODLASKI, Poland (JTA) — Dozens of old Jewish tombstones were unearthed during the renovation of a marketplace in eastern Poland.
Workers rebuilding the terrace leading to shops located at the market in Skolow Podlaski found the broken Jewish tombstones. The tombstones were removed and transported for safekeeping to a city office.
“We are in contact with the mayor and the tombstones will come back to the cemetery,” Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told JTA.
In the 1930s some 60 percent of Sokolow’s 10,000 residents were Jewish. Most of them were killed at nearby Treblinka in September 1942, and the town’s two Jewish cemeteries were completely destroyed during the war.
Now that the tombstones pieces have been found, community leaders are considering building a concrete wall with pieces of broken tombstones embedded in it at the site of one of the old Jewish cemeteries.
