Staszow
"Staszów, Poland" by Al Davis
Staszów (pronounced Stá-chev) is where my maternal grandmother (nee Rose Fefferman) was born and raised. In the early 20th century, she emigrated to America. She married my grandfather, Morris Slobodow, who had been born and raised in Puchowitz, Belarus. In the summer of 2006, my wife, son and I made a pilgrimage back to both of these villages in a hope to find some traces of our heritage. In Puchowitz, every trace of Jewish history had been destroyed. However, in Staszów we found some history.
Staszów had been home to a large Jewish population for 250 years when the Nazis invaded Poland. There had been two Jewish cemeteries in Staszów:
- the "old cemetery" located about 5 blocks due west of the southwest corner of the central market. You can see it on this map from 1942 (look at 9 o'clock on the map for the words "old Jewish cemetery" just to the left of the "work camp").
- the "new cemetery" dating back to the early nineteenth century located about a mile south of the central market. You can see it on the same map at around 4 o'clock.
In November 1942, the Nazis murdered all the Jewish citizens, and as a final insult, destroyed both cemeteries. See a list of half the victims of this atrocity at https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/staszow/sta612.html. The tops of the rounded tombstones were chopped off to make it easier to use them as paving stones. After the war, local Poles collected them as souvenirs. The "old cemetery" grounds have been preserved with a high fence by a benevolent history professor from the adjacent college (the school had been founded by a Jew 200 years ago); the professor allows nobody into those grounds. He reports that there are no remaining headstones or evidence of the land's original purpose. But he protects the land because he knows that hundreds of Jewish bodies are buried there.
In 2002, a collection of 150+ Jewish tombstones were found in one Staszów home and these were placed on the hallowed grounds of the "new cemetery" along with other tombstones found in other nearby homes. In 2006, we were fortunate to meet the kind Catholic professor who had protected the old cemetery, and to visit the tombstones that had been placed in the new cemetery in 2002. Here are some photos of these tombstones. Most of these have contain given names of the deceased as well as given names of the deceased's parents. Only a few include "family names." Please note that I have only a rudimentary ability to read Hebrew, so if you find any mistakes I made in translation, please send me an email
with corrections. Also, if you locate any tombstones that you believe belong to your family members or friends, please let me know. May they rest in peace. אולי הם נחים בשלום
Also, I have many additional photos of small tombstone fragments from Staszów, so if you are searching for a loved one and happen to have a photo of the original tombstone, let me know
and I'll send you what I have.
Thank you anonymous A B of Israel for helping to translate some of the above tombstone inscriptions.
