Like many Jewish cemeteries across Poland, the one in Suwałki stood abandoned, hidden by a roadside wall and padlocked shut. In an act of defiance, I watched as my father—a lifelong atheist—leapt over the brick wall and into the graveyard, prompting the rest of us to follow shortly after. Just days earlier, he had insisted on wearing a yarmulke when we visited Auschwitz. Now here he was, hurdling over a cemetery wall. Today, he tells me he would never return to Poland—the trip upset him too deeply.
This memory of my father lingered in my mind throughout my 2024 fellowship with JewishGen. Our work with the organization was not the first time I had encountered forgotten and dilapidated Jewish cemeteries. In 2018, my family and I traveled to Poland to retrace my maternal grandparents’ steps, including visiting Suwałki, the small town where my grandfather was raised. The town’s cemetery shocked me. The tombstones, all damaged during the war and the years that followed, were in dire condition. It was clear no one had been taking care of them. Some had fallen over; others were broken in multiple pieces or vandalized with graffiti. At the time, I thought Suwalki’s cemetery was a particularly bad case of neglect. But it wasn’t until I visited Krasnystaw, a town outside of Lublin, as a part of my work with Jewish Gen, that I realized just how wrong I was.
In Krasnystaw, there is no metal gate in front of the entrance to the cemetery; there aren’t even any stairs. The cemetery is hidden behind thick trees and overgrown underbrush. Situated alongside a fast-moving road, it is nearly impossible for passersby to recognize that anything significant lies here.
Composed of eight undergraduate fellows, three organizers with JewishGen, and other volunteers, our group’s goal was to uncover a mass grave, believed to be the burial site of Holocaust victims. Many mass killings perpetrated by the Nazis were committed in or near Jewish cemeteries. Based on testimony from a Holocaust survivor, who was only a little girl when she lost her parents in the slaughter, we had a general sense of where this mass grave might be. But there was a problem: the entire area in question was so overgrown that radar technology couldn’t be used to detect any abnormalities in the ground. Our task was to clear the area to see what we could find.
From the beginning, it was a difficult, grueling process. Entering the cemetery wasn’t easy. It sits about six feet below the highway, with no clear path, entrance, or demarcation line in sight. We had to carry all of our equipment down the steep incline and wade through thick underbrush. The path that once led to the cemetery was buried beneath layers of debris and was indistinguishable from the rest of the forest. Of the original gravestones, only one remained standing. Pieces of other tombstones lay scattered, so covered in moss that they resembled nothing more than rocks. While we were told this area had been cleared in the past couple years, nature had reclaimed it quickly. To an untrained eye, the cemetery appeared as though it had been completely abandoned for decades.
Our group of volunteers was incredibly diverse. Steven Reece, the founder of The Matzevah Foundation, was the leader of the operation. A Baptist minister originally from Texas, Steven had lived in Poland for over a decade and acted as our de facto translator. Over the years, he has worked on restoring hundreds of Jewish cemeteries across Poland. Also among us were a philosophy professor from Lublin; a Polish volunteer who had fought in Ukraine; Helene, a Jewish woman from New York whose family was from Krasnystaw; and a handful of other volunteers from different backgrounds, most of whom were not Jewish.
Steven explained to us that a tell-tale sign of a mass grave is a depression in the ground. When bodies decompose, the soil above them sinks as the cavities in the skeletons collapse, disrupting the ground above them. This phenomenon is especially common in shallow graves. In the case of Krasnystaw, the human remains could be as shallow as four inches below the surface.
The group was divided into three main tasks: “Pullers” who used weed whacker, electric saws, and pliers to clear overgrown vegetation; “Draggers,” who hauled away the debris; and later on, “Cleaners,” who carefully worked to clean up the tombstones. Steven emphasized that the main motto of our work was to “do no harm,” meaning we were instructed not to pull up any plants or disturb anything that could be near human remains lying close to the surface.
After three long days of work, we uncovered a depression wide enough to suggest that at least 100, if not more, victims were buried here. The area we cleared was visibly different from the surrounding forest. The plants had a yellowish tint, and their texture was distinct.
Some of the fellows cried; others knelt down, lost in thought. I paced around the area, trying to envision what this place looked like more than 80 years ago, reflecting on my own grandfather’s family, who had perished in a forest not unlike this one. Later in the day, we held a small ceremony, reading the names of the relatives Helene believed were among the victims killed here. Afterward, we packed up our equipment for the last time, knowing that a team would soon arrive with ground-penetrating radar to confirm the presence of the mass grave. Hopefully the local government will eventually erect a plaque to mark this site—not as a forgotten patch of foliage along a road but as a place of remembrance.
That night, as we prepared to return back to the US, the mood was quiet. I sat with Steven in the living room, deep in thought. I couldn’t help but wonder why we were leaving the remains in that ditch. Wouldn’t it be more respectful to their memory to exhume them, to give them a proper resting place, rather than leave them where they died and were subjected to unimaginable horror? Steven explained that Jewish law forbids disturbing the dead, even if they were victims of atrocities. The only exception, he told me, was in cases where the grave site is being desecrated. He recalled an instance where the Polish government had ordered the exhumation of ten Holocaust victims’ remains to make space for a tourist attraction.The message from the authorities to the Jewish community was clear: “Either you dig them up, or we will.”
Jewish cemetery desecration is an often overlooked facet of Holocaust history. I was shocked to learn that Płaszów, the concentration camp that my grandfather survived, was built on top of two former Jewish cemeteries. Even today, more than 80 years since the start of WWII, Jewish gravestones continue to be vandalized. Just this past July, 176 gravestones at two Jewish cemeteries in Cincinnati were defaced.
When I asked Steven if he, as a non-Jew, had ever experienced any pushback from Poland’s Orthodox community against his work, he told me yes. Some had refused to speak to him, despite his decade-long commitment to restoring Jewish cemeteries.
I firmly believe that cemetery conservation is not solely a mission for those who are Jewish. To fight rising antisemitism, we need people like Steven—and the many Polish volunteers we met—to care about preserving the history of Poland’s Jewish community. When people learn that Steven is a Southern Baptist from Texas, they often react with surprise, and ask why he’s so committed to his work. His answer is simple: “Reconciliation.”
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