Polish Jewish Cemetery Used for Topless Photo Shoot

Overgrown: This neglected Jewish cemetery in the Polish town of Checiny was used for a racy photo shoot. Image by courtesy of sztetl.com

By JTA August 20, 2013

Polish photographer Lukasz Szczygielski has apologized for conducting a photo shoot with a half-naked model at the Jewish cemetery in the southern Polish town of Checiny.

Szczygielski explained that he wanted to draw attention to the neglected cemetery. “I wanted to draw attention to the neglect of the place. The cemetery is forgotten, he told Gazeta Wyborcza. The model posed against the headstones naked from the waist up, with a necklace bearing a large cross hanging between her breasts.

“This is not the appropriate form of drawing attention to Jewish cemeteries. I would prefer that this man rather clean up the cemetery rather than doing naked session there,” Krzysztof Bielawski of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews told local television station TVP Kielce.

“If it offended anyone I deeply apologize. This was not the intention of the session,” Szczygielski told TVP Kielce.

“One can draw attention to the Jewish cemetery in a number of other, far less shocking, ways,” Piotr Kadlcik, president of The Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, told the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper.

The Jewish cemetery in Checiny was opened in the 17th century. There are about one hundred and fifty tombstones in the cemetery.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO