קאָלאָמיי — אוהל רבי הלל ליכטענשטיין

Kolomyia — Ohel of Reb Hillel Lichtenstein

Kolomyia (Kolomea) · קאָלאָמיי

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Visitor experience

Practical notes from visitors — access, directions, and the condition of the site.

How to get there

Ohel in the municipal park on the site of the second Jewish cemetery, near the corner of Antona Chekhova and Symona Petliury streets, Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine

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The exact grave coordinates are not confirmed yet — go by the address and ask locally. We don't publish a coordinate we haven't checked.

1.The grave is an approximation, not a located stone. Reb Yisrael Meir Gabay of Oholei Tzadikim traced the site in 1998, obtained municipal permits, and built the ohel and tombstone with the Kolomyer Rebbe, Reb Shmuel Levi Weinberger — but the sources say plainly that the stone was set up on the approximated place of burial, and it stands in a municipal park, not in a maintained cemetery.
2.THERE IS SOMEWHERE TO STAY AT THE OHEL. Oholei Tzadikim record that a guest house was built beside it for the people who come regularly and spend Shabbos at the site. Almost nothing else on this site has that — a kever in Galicia you can stay at over Shabbos rather than drive to and leave. Ask them what is standing and open before you count on it.
3.THE SITE WAS FENCED BEFORE THE OHEL WENT UP, by the Avoiseynu organisation, and the ohel was then built by Oholei Tzadikim and Geder Avos together with the Kolomyer Rebbe. That is who to ask about it, rather than the municipality that owns the park.
4.ONE THING ON GEDER AVOS' OWN PAGE IS NOT RIGHT, and it is worth knowing before somebody repeats it to you. That page runs on from Kolomyia into saying the area was formerly Okup, the Baal Shem Tov's birthplace. Okopy is a different place, roughly a hundred and twenty kilometres east near Borshchiv. Kolomyia is not the Besht's birthplace and this listing does not say it is.
5.There have been press reports of a fire at a Jewish mausoleum in Ukraine treated as possible arson and connected to this site. Check the ohel's current condition before you route a group to it.
6.The ground under the park is Kolomyia's second Jewish cemetery, in use from 1783 to 1894, whose entrance stood at the corner of what are now Antona Chekhova and Symona Petliury streets, a few blocks north of Ivana Franka Street.
7.Two things not to confuse: the Lichtenstein Kolomiya section at Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn is a landsmanshaft burial-society plot and not his grave, and there is a living Rabbi Hillel Lichtenstein unconnected to this tzaddik. Confirm the exact spot of the ohel locally before you travel.
8.TWO GROUNDS, AND THIS LISTING WILL NOT CHOOSE BETWEEN THEM. ESJF surveyed an old Jewish cemetery at 48.53329, 25.04262 and a newer one at 48.53126, 25.05949, about a kilometre and a quarter apart. Neither survey says which of them is the second cemetery of 1783–1894 that lies under the park this page describes, so no single map point is published. Take both.

U.S. State Department · Ukraine

Level 4: Do Not Travel

Reissued with updates after periodic review. Do not travel to Ukraine due to Russia’s war against Ukraine. The Department of State continues to advise U.S. citizens to not travel to frontline regions of Ukraine and areas along Ukraine’s border with Belarus due to presence of Russian and Belarusian military …

Updated Nov 14, 2024. Read the full advisory →

Closest airports

The three nearest airports with scheduled service — tap for exact driving or transit time.

Lviv (LWO)Lviv Danylo Halytskyi International· 163 km · 101 mi straight-line· regional
🚗 By car →🚆 Public transit →
Cluj-Napoca (CLJ)Cluj-Napoca International· 219 km · 136 mi straight-line· regional
🚗 By car →🚆 Public transit →
Iași (IAS)Iași International· 244 km · 152 mi straight-line· regional
🚗 By car →🚆 Public transit →

Who is buried here

Known kevarim

רבי הלל ליכטענשטיין מקאָלאָמיי

Rabbi Hillel Lichtenstein of Kolomyia

The Maskil El Dal of Kolomyia (d. 1891)

משכיל אל דל

Yahrzeit: י׳ אייר · 5651 / 1891

Son of Rabbi Baruch, born in Vecs in Hungary and a talmid of the Chasam Sofer, he married in 1837 and came to Kolomea in 1867, serving as its rav and as a leader of Hungarian Orthodoxy until his petirah there — not the modern Rabbi Hillel Lichtenstein of the same name.

Verification

No public access contact has been verified for this cemetery yet.