גרודזיסק

ציון האמרי אלימלך

Grodzisk — Kever of the Imrei Elimelech

Jewish cemetery, gate on ulica Żydowska, between the Błonie and Rokitno roads by the railway station, Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland

• Resting place of Rabbi Elimelech Shapiro of Grodzisk, the Imrei Elimelech, a great-grandson of the Maggid of Kozhnitz.
• THE KEY IS AT THE TOWN HALL, NOT AT THE GATE. It is held by the municipal housing and services department at ulica Sportowa 29. Collect it there before going to the cemetery — the gate is on ulica Żydowska, and the ground lies between the Błonie and Rokitno roads beside the railway station.
• THE TZADDIK'S TOMB IS PRESERVED, which is the point of the journey: the Germans destroyed the cemetery and its matzevos went into building work, and decay carried on after the war until restoration began in 1988. The ground was landmarked in 1996. Matzevos found at a nearby address in 2002 were recovered and brought back.
• What survives is a mixture of whole matzevos and fragments, nineteenth and early twentieth century, some of them carved sandstone with candlesticks, seforim and animals cut into them. The ground was opened in the second half of the seventeen hundreds and enlarged four times, the last in 1934.
• One thing not to confuse: archaeological work has been done on the site of an older Jewish burial ground on Żydowska which had become a scrap-metal yard, and traces of a tomb thought to be his were found there. That is a separate investigation, not the cemetery you visit, and nothing about it is settled.
• SURVEYED COORDINATES. The map point on this listing is the cemetery itself, measured on the ground by the ESJF survey — not a town centre. Where a kever is inside an ohel it will still need finding once you are through the gate, but the gate is now something you can navigate to.