Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery
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| Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery | |
 Graves at Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery. |
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| Cemetery Details | |
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| Country: | Poland |
| Location: | Warsaw, Poland |
| Coordinates: | 52°14′51″N 20°58′29″E / 52.2475°N 20.97472°ECoordinates: 52°14′51″N 20°58′29″E / 52.2475°N 20.97472°E |
| Size: | 33 ha |
The Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe. Located on Warsaw's Okopowa street and abutting the Powązki Cemetery at 52°14′51″N 20°58′29″E / 52.2475°N 20.97472°ECoordinates: 52°14′51″N 20°58′29″E / 52.2475°N 20.97472°E, the Jewish Cemetery was established in 1806 and occupies 33 hectares (83 acres) of land. The cemetery contains over 200,000 marked graves, as well as mass graves of victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. Many of these graves and crypts are overgrown, having been abandoned after the German invasion of Poland and subsequent Holocaust. Although the cemetery was closed down during World War II, after the war it was reopened and a small portion of it remains active, serving Warsaw's small remaining Jewish population.
The cemetery, which has become a dense forest in the post-war period, is filled with monuments to Jewish communists, orthodox rabbis, and everyone in between. Many of the markers are simple, others are elaborately carved with Art nouveau angels drooping mournfully over a tomb or with large, elaborate bas relief panoramas of a somewhat imaginary medieval Warsaw. Large mausoleums appear in styles ranging from Egyptian revival to Art deco.
Some of the prominent Jewish citizens buried there are:
- Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, Rosh yeshiva of the Volozhin Yeshiva and author of several major Jewish works
- Chaim Soloveitchik, founder of the Brisk rabbinic dynasty & the "brisker method" of Talmudic study
- Solomon Anski, writer (Solomon Zangwill Rappaport), author of "The Dybbuk"
- Szymon Askenazy, archaeologist
- Meir Balaban
- Mathias Bersohn, philanthropist
- Adam Czerniakow, head of the Judenrat in the Warsaw Ghetto
- Jacob Dinezon (1852-1919), writer
- Marek Edelman
- Maurycy Fajans, founder of the first steamboat line on the Vistula
- Esther Rachel Kaminska (1870-1925), the "mother of Yiddish Theater", mother of Ida Kaminska
- Michał Klepfisz
- Samuel Orgelbrand, publisher of the Universal Encyclopaedia
- Isaac Loeb Peretz (1852-1915) one of the most important Yiddish language writers of the 19th-20th centuries
- Samuel Abraham Poznański
- Julian Stryjkowski, (born Pesach Stark) 1905-1996, writer, author of "Austeria" "Voices in Darkness"
- Hipolit Wawelberg, founder of Warsaw Technical College,
- Lucjan Wolanowski
- Ludwik Zamenhof, doctor and inventor of Esperanto.
