Welcome to Yaslo

The Cemetery in Jaslo

Before Monika Hendry gave us a first hand impression (see below), the only source material we had was the Jaslo Cemetery Survey, completed in 1992 by the US Commission (#POCE000724). The following is adapted from their report:
The cemetery is on Florjanska Street. The cemetery was used by Orthodox, and Progressive-Reform. It is located in a urban area, on flat land, isolated from the rest of town. Access off a public road is entirely closed. It is marked by a plaque in Polish referring to Jews and by Jewish symbols on gate or wall. There is a continuous masonry wall and a locked gate.
One third of a hectacre in size, there are between 20 to 100 gravestones, not in their original locations; 50%-75% are toppled or broken. The location of stones removed from the cemetery is not known. Tombstones are datable from both the 19th and 20th centuries. The stones, inscribed in Hebrew and Polish, are made of marble, granite, sandstone and concrete of all shapes, some smooth and inscribed, some flat with carved relief decorations, some sculpted. There are marked and unmarked mass graves and special memorial monuments to Holocaust victims but no other structures.
The present owner is the municipality but the property is used only as a Jewish cemetery. Properties adjacent to the cemetery are residential. The cemetery is visited occasionally by both Jewish and non-Jewish private visitors.
The cemetery is known to have been vandalized during World War II. The gate was repaired and cleaning the stones and removing vegetation was carried out by local/municipal authorities. Vegetation disturbing the graves is a constant problem, weather erosion a moderate threat, security and pollution a slight threat.

Next received was the following comment was made by a visitor in 1997: "The cemetery is located on Ulica Florjanska, opposite house Nr.85. It is well-groomed. A new memorial reminds of holocaust. We could not find a sign of the former WWI military graves."

Monika's Photographs and Impressions

Then Monika Hendry sent us wonderful photographs and her impressions:
Until very recently there was a broken little water pump at the corner (turning off the main road to the cemetery) for visitors to wash their hands. I remember my g-mother saying that Jews would always wash their hands before entering the cemetery.
Monika's first task was to locate the key. She found out that the key is held by the director of the Dom Kulturi.
Monika wrote: "The cemetery, viewed from the padlocked gate, is overgrown and unkempt: reminded me of the lawn surrounding a haunted house. I used to climb over the wall. There's a new pavement leading to the gate but it is already overgrown.

Monika sent these photographs.......so let's begin with the first view of the cemetery................ and go to the wonderful gate.....

Monika: It is a jungle inside. It is actually quite dangerous to walk around because of all the toppled tombstones and ditches covered by the undergrowth.The irony is that the tombstones of the rich made of marble and basalt were removed very early on, right after the war by a Polish stone mason....so the very

few graves that remain are presumably of poor people and as such were not attractive. There are a few very new ones which all name people killed by Germans. They look like they were put very recently.
These are original stones that I saw:

1. Naftali Welfeld, schied 12 Oktober 1905
2. Marya ze Steinhausow Welfeldowa, zmarla 7-go czerwcz 1904 (possibly wife of Naftali, Marya from the Steinhaus
   family, Welfeld, died 4 June 1904)
3. Alter i Debora Zuckerowie 4.XI.1924, 21.II.1938
4. Leibish Schinagel, gest am 29 April 1915 im 62 lebens jahre, tief betrauert son seinen kindern
5. Herman Herzig 1884-1924
6. Anna z Zuckerow Menassowa 2.X. 1921
7. Mojzesz Polaner 1861-1911

(Editor) Bill Leibner has done some explanation and translation for us, as follows:
The tombstone above which is broken is an interesting one.The name is not mentioned directly since this was not the custom in those days. They therefore took each letter and found a line in the holy writtings that started with the letter. You have the following letters; tz, d, vav, and kof which stands for Tzadok (righteous), a typical Hebrew first name. The last name is represented by the last line Weber. Thus the stone is for Tzadok Weber.
The stone immediately above on the right is a stone for a woman. You can see the candelabra, symbol of lighting candles, usually done by women on Friday and the evening before holidays. You also see the letters P.T.that stand for "here is buried"... Unfortunately the foliage covers the important details.

Monika also found this article in the "Jaslo News" dated 3 August 1894; it said "we can see that the Jewish commune holds the ashes of their dead in higher respect than Catholic people, whose cemetery lies on the river (Jasiolka), and is flooded whenever the water rises even a little. We don't have a swimming pool when we are alive so we can enjoy it when we are dead free of charge".
These sarcastic comments from a journalist were prompted by the fact that Jaslo's Catholic cemetery, set up in 1790, was right next to the river and frequently flooded, while the Jewish kehilla purchased a nice elevated site on the border of Jaslo and the village of Sobniow (now Jaslo suburb).

Just in case you get to Yaslo, you may want to find the cemetery....you'll find it on the bottom right hand corner of the map at the top of this page.....but if you cannot get to Yaslo, you may want to visit one of the Landsmanshaften cemeteries in New Jersey.........

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