In March 2008, we managed to successfully reactivate the Częstochowa Judaic Community, which is an integral part of the All-Polish Judaic Community with its headquarters in Gdańsk.
Our community is a religious, mental, physical and formal heir of the pre-war Częstochowa Judaic Community; therefore it takes over and continues the duty to care for the heritage that has been left over to us by the Jewish population of Częstochowa.
Thanks to the fact that the Częstochowa Jewish community has been reactivated at last, the Jewish cemetery (Kirkut) at ul. Złota in Częstochowa finally has its formal owner, i.e. a keeper who is responsible for taking care of the area and for collecting funds for its renovation. The Kirkut’s fortune has been quite changeable over the last sixty years. Devastated during the war and in the post-war period, it was plundered down to the ground piece by piece by the local population and stone working companies. Then, it was annexed by the communist authorities and B. Bierut Steelworks to become part of the land owned by the foundry. A several meters high embankment was built to enable railway traffic, in this way cutting off the Kirkut for good from ul. Złota. Entrance to the cemetery was possible only if one had a special pass that was issued to potential visitors rather rarely. There were huge problems about. I experienced them myself. Everyone who entered the premises of the Steelworks, including the cemetery, obviously was a suspicious individual, who required to be closely observed. In fact, neither the communist authorities nor the Steelworks itself had any right whatsoever to take over the Kirkut. Unfortunately, steel deliveries to the Soviet Union had to be ever increasing, and so the communists needed to enlarge their industrial and living area. Therefore, they enforced another final solution in the 70s. They decided to raze the cemetery to the ground, and to symbolically move some artifacts found in the debris when the bulldozers completed their work to the nearby town of Olsztyn. It was the time of the highest devastation to the cemetery, but fortunately this barbaric plan to move the cemetery remnants fell through eventually. Shortly after that, the communist system itself went to the garbage heap of history.
On the 4th of July 1988, I established the Foundation for Protection of Historical Monuments and Support for Artists, which was the only organization in fact to really care for the Kirkut. At that time, Poland was visited by Rabbi Pinchas Menachem Joskowicz, and we began to renovate the cemetery together with him. Rabbi Joskowicz was the Chief Rabbi of Poland since the end of the war. Rabbi Joskowicz managed the project from the religious and mental point of view, while my foundation was in charge of its financing and contracting. We managed to cut down hundreds of trees, rebuild the Ohel, and surround a part of the cemetery with a masonry fence. Together with various sponsors, we staked out a number of avenues, hardened drive-ins and roads, and performed some archiving works.
In the successive turns of history, the Bolesław Bierut Steelworks became the Częstochowa Steelworks, only to be finally taken over by the Donbas concern. The new democratic Poland did not treat our Foundation well, and so the Kirkut again ceased to have its owner. Unfortunately, the cemetery was then “taken care of” by various accidental Jewish organizations from Katowice, Warszawa, and Częstochowa, which performed only semi-custodian, representative and mental functions. Most of them would visit the scene once a year, make a philosemitic photo – and that was all. The cemetery at ul. Złota is again overgrown with shrubs and bushes that make graves burst, the area is dirty, and certainly more matzevas are missing.
It is going to change now.
Emergence of the Kirkut’s owner pleased the Province Historical Monuments Conservation Officer, as he now has a party from which he can demand care over the cemetery, but at the same time he has an addressee of potential support in cemetery renovation works.
Three years earlier, in 2005, we started up the Historical Association of Częstochowa Jews so that it could take due care over the Mikvah building, i.e. the Jewish ritual baths, and open the Jewish Cultural Research Center in the newly reconstructed building. In fact, there is a high demand for Judaism lectures, Hebrew language courses and conversations, or, in more general terms, for conversion to Judaism.
Over the last two years, we increased the number of the Association’s members to twenty five, we organized a number of exhibitions, opened the main office, shot some films upon Jewish issues, compiled documentations required to receive EU, ministerial, poviat (county), city, and historical monument conservation subsidies.