Debbie and David Greenlee

June, 2002

Beginning in festive downtown Bukowsko, travel south on the main paved road through town, i.e. to the left, if you're facing the church. After you pass the last house on the left side of the road (the houses on the right side go on somewhat further) you will pass, again on your left, a bus stop shelter followed by a large shrine. Set your odometer to zero at the shrine.

Travel 1.8 km, which will take you past the marked turnoff to Wola Piotrowa. At the end of that 1.8 km there will be a good-sized dirt road turning off to your left, with another small road turning off to the right more or less opposite the dirt road. The dirt road to your left is the one you want. It's a pretty good road at this point and appears to have been graded. It's not just two wheel ruts (yet).

Turn left onto the dirt road. The road becomes very rocky very quickly, and it eventually deteriorates into two wheel ruts. Once you have turned onto this road, you will see fields on both sides for the entire journey, except for one building you will come to on your right. I thought it was a house (it had lace curtains in the windows), but the folks who were with me told me that once you got close, you could tell that it was something else. Roman, the local fellow we had with us, said that it belonged to the electric company.

Immediately past this building the main ruts will turn right, but you should continue straight ahead on a more overgrown set of ruts. At about 3.6 km on your odometer, as you go up a hill, the wheel ruts will curve sharply to the right. This will be the first major turn you've encountered, since you passed the electric company building, but do not turn. Instead, take a deep breath and continue driving straight ahead into the weeds or crops. You may not be able to see any trace of a road or path, but just go on. After twenty or thirty meters you will be over the top of the hill and find that you are at a dirt road that forms a "T" with the road you have been traveling on. Turn left on this road. Though it initially looks better than the road you've been on, you will quickly find that it is very rocky and uneven.

At about 3.9 km on your odometer you will find a side road to the right leading downhill at an angle to the road that you are on. If your car was at the center of a clock face with the front of your car pointed at 12:00, this road would point in the direction of 4:00 or 5:00. We parked at this point and walked the rest of the way because the road was so bad. As it was, our Ford Focus just barely did make it to this point, bottoming out and dragging rocks on the undercarriage again and again.

Walk down that side road, which will curve to the left at the bottom of a small valley, then will curve right as it climbs out on the other side. That curve will end and the road will run straight, but will continue to climb. About the point at which the curve ends, a forest will join the road on the right. The road will have the forest on the right and fields on the left for a short way, but then the forest will also close in on the left. After that point the road will be forested on both sides, and will continue to climb.

The cemetery is in the forest on your right. We were told that it begins about halfway between the point that the forest joins the road on your right and the point where it closes in on the left. The cemetery then extends uphill, more or less parallel to the road, for an unknown distance, but past the point where the forest closes in on the road from the left.

There is a thick forest canopy above the cemetery and chest-high to head-high thick undergrowth throughout almost all of the area. Roman led us to a path under the trees through an area with very little underbrush into a clearing with no trees, but heavy underbrush. Before we came to the clearing, in the area with little underbrush, there was a large monument (perhaps three meters tall originally) toppled over right by the path, perhaps 30 or 40 meters off the road. In the clearing, which was another 20-30 meters further, Roman showed us two smaller headstone-type monuments flat on the ground and covered with underbrush and we found a third while tramping down the brush to try to take a photo. This one was also rather large. All four were covered with thick coatings of soil and moss. Even with some scrubbing with (bare) hands and feet all four were pretty much illegible, but a few Hebrew characters could be made out and the inscription might have been made legible if we'd had a stiff brush, water, and material to take rubbings.

We left by the same way we came in.

We were told that there was a much shorter way than the way that we came, but that it was so rough and rocky that Roman did not think our car could take it. He did not tell us how the shorter way ran, but I'm pretty sure that you can go straight to the point where we left the car by following these directions: Take the street in Bukowsko that runs between the hotel and the multi-floor store. This street will cross the creek and then climb the hill on the other side. At the top of the hill you will pass another large, chapel-like shrine on your right, and then this road will continue going straight out into the fields. I think this road will continue to run straight, with fields on both sides, until it reaches the turnoff where, as described above, we left the car and began walking. Coming from this way, the side road to the cemetery will turn off at an angle to your front left instead of to your rear right.

If that route works, it's probably not much more than one and a half or two kilometers from Bukowsko to the cemetery, the equivalent of about nine to twelve U.S. city blocks. That would make sense, since it had to be close enough for funeral processions to travel by foot and for people to visit the graves of their loved ones. If you are in a van or S.U.V., which has a bit more underside clearance than a passenger car, you can probably go the shorter way if you take it slow and easy, but we tried it and it was in fact too rough for our car.

If you really want to explore this cemetery, you will need to bring drinking water, insect repellent, tools with which you can clear brush, and materials with which to clean and take rubbings from headstones. (Here's a chance to experience the joy of clearing the land with a Polish weed eater -a scythe - just like your ancestors did.) Wear gloves and a long-sleeved shirt and long pants made from denim, canvas or some other heavy fabric to help keep away the bugs, thorns, and nettles. It should be a fascinating, if exhausting, project.

The shrine, buildings, roads, and other landmarks mentioned in this article are as they existed in late June, 2002. As they say, your kilometrage may vary.

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