פלוצק

פלוצק — בית החיים

Płock — the Jewish cemetery

Jewish cemetery, ulica Mickiewicza, Płock, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland

• THE OLD CEMETERY IS GONE AND IS NOT WHERE YOU GO. It was bought as a garden around 1570 and took its last burial in 1850; after the war the ground was given over for building, and a park and a high school dormitory stand on it. One piece of its wall survives by the crossing on Padlewskiego, with a mural painted on it in 2018.
• The cemetery to go to is on Mickiewicza, about a kilometre and a half north-east of the old market square, opened 1845 and in use until 1968. It is fenced, the gate does not lock, and anyone may walk in.
• EXPECT AN EMPTY FIELD. It is three point two hectares — the same size it was before the war — and about ten matzevos are left standing on the whole of it.
• Reb Zysze Plocker lies here and did not start here. Under the German occupation, while the matzevos of the old cemetery were being carted off for road work, a group of Jews dug up his kever, wrapped his remains in a tallis and reburied him in this ground together with the sifrei Torah that had been desecrated. There is no stone to point to; what is here is the fact of it.