A recent storm in Poland led to the destruction of many of the graves in the Great Jewish Cemetery of Warsaw.
A visitor told the haredi newspaper Hamevasser, “This scene is terrible. Thousands of Jewish graves, including those of rabbis and dignitaries, are buried under hundreds of trees which collapsed on them. And nobody is doing anything about it.”
“The cemetery’s negelected state is nothing new. It has been abandoned. There is a Jew who works [to maintain the cemetery], but even his hands are tied. The Jewish community of Warsaw, which is in charge of the cemetery, must be urged to live up to its responsibility.
“The Jewish community in Warsaw must, first of all, deal with this emergency, clearing the trees that collapsed on the graves, before it is too late. [This must be done] so that [the graves of] the sacred are not lost.”
The cemetery is the second largest Jewish cemetery in Poland and one of the largest in the world. The cemetery covers an area of 336 dunams (83 acres) and houses more than 200,000 marked graves, as well as the mass graves of those murdered in the Warsaw ghetto.