21 Gravestones Created by Famed Jewish Craftsman Are Restored at Warsaw Cemetery
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage financed the restoration of 21 historic gravestones at the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.
The gravestones were crafted before the World War II by Abraham Ostrzega, a Jewish artist murdered in 1942 in Treblinka.
Among the restored gravestones are Mausoleum of the Three Writers – where are buried Polish writers Isaac Leib Peretz, Jakub Dinezon and Szymon Anski, the grave of Uri Nissan Gnissen, a Russian-Jewish writer who died in 1913, and the mausoleum of Magnus Krynski, a Polish writer and editor who died in 1916.
At the entrance to the cemetery is available free map of part of the cemetery, which marks the gravestones crafted by Ostrzega.
“We want to symbolically highlight … this exceptional creator, from whom the Nazis irreversibly took back the opportunity to develop his individual talent,” Polish Culture Minister Piotr Glinski said during the ceremony.
The opening of the exhibition of restored gravestones took place on the 75th anniversary of the Wannsee conference, where the Nazis plotted to exterminate the Jews.
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