אפטא

אפטא — מצבת זכרון לרבי מאיר הלוי מאפטא בעל 'אור לשמים'

Opatów — Cenotaph for Reb Meir HaLevi of Apta, the Ohr LaShamayim

Site of the Jewish cemetery, ul. Kopernika, Opatów, Opatów County, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, Poland

• There is no kever to stand at here and no ohel. The Germans destroyed this cemetery and its matzevot were looted and built into walls around the town; Reb Meir HaLevi's individual grave cannot be identified today, so do not come expecting a marked resting place.
• What stands on the ground on ul. Kopernika is a cenotaph — a memorial stone, not a grave — built in 2022 from recovered matzeva fragments, together with a commemorative plaque and a lapidarium of roughly 25 to 30 salvaged stones and fragments, 18 of them set into a new concrete base shaped like a matzeva and laid flat.
• Meir Bulka of J-nerations came here specifically to try to find this Rebbe's grave and instead found tombstone fragments built into a wall between the town's auditorium and cultural centre; the wall was dismantled and the stones brought back in a ceremony marking 80 years since the Opatów ghetto was destroyed.
• Do not confuse this with the other Apter Rov: the famous Ohev Yisroel, Reb Avraham Yehoshua Heshel, served in Opatów but is buried in Medzhibozh in Ukraine, beside the Baal Shem Tov. Two different Apter rebbes, two different countries — and confirm with the Opatów tourist office exactly where the lapidarium stands before you drive.
• 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.