Łódź New Jewish Cemetery — forty hectares of the city's history

Why it opened when it did

Nineteenth-century Łódź grew at a rate that is hard to picture now, and its Jewish community grew with it. The older cemetery on Wesoła Street had no room left to expand, and the argument over enlarging it coincided with an outbreak of cholera. The new cemetery opened on 10 November 1892, and the first burials that winter were around seven hundred victims of the epidemic.

The first ten and a half hectares were a gift from Izrael Poznański, one of the city's biggest industrialists. The ground was extended repeatedly and now covers over forty hectares divided into a hundred and thirty-one sections.

Burials are estimated at between 180,000 and 230,000 people. Berlin's Weißensee cemetery covers more ground but holds considerably fewer monuments; by number of graves, Łódź is the largest surviving Jewish cemetery in Europe. It remains in use, cared for by the Jewish Community of Łódź.

The tomb that outgrew every other

On the main avenue stands the mausoleum of Izrael Poznański, large enough that it is sometimes called the manufacturer's last palace. It is reckoned the largest Jewish tomb in the world and the only one with decorative mosaic work; the mosaic-lined dome was among the first parts of the cemetery to be restored after the war.

It is not an exception here so much as the extreme case. The neighbouring sections hold the other families who built industrial Łódź: Barciński, Jarociński, Konstadt, Rosenblatt. Their tombs take the form of chapels, porticoes and mausoleums, often with cast-iron railings and imported stone — effectively a catalogue of Łódź bourgeois taste around 1900.

Alongside them lie people better known from biographies than from economic history: Rabbi Eliasz Chaim Majzel, the physician Seweryn Sterling, the painter Stanisław Heyman, and the parents of Julian Tuwim and Artur Rubinstein. More than six hundred Roma and Sinti are buried in locations that were never recorded.

The pre-burial house and Art Nouveau stones

At the entrance stands the pre-burial house, the beit tahara, where the dead were ritually washed. It was completed in 1898 to a design by Adolf Zeligson, paid for largely by Mina Konstadt. With a footprint of around 850 square metres it is the largest of its kind in Poland and reads more as a civic building than a cemetery one.

Visitors who know only the austere traditional stele are often surprised here. Beside them stand Art Nouveau headstones, with plant ornament and the soft line of the early twentieth century — a rarity in Jewish cemeteries. Together with the industrialists' tombs they describe a community that was half traditional and half assimilated and very wealthy.

A brick perimeter wall survived the war and still encloses the ground. Inside grow more than eight thousand trees; a care programme has been running since 2021, since the old canopies both shelter the monuments and threaten them.

The Ghetto Field

From 1940 to 1944 the cemetery lay inside the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, the largest ghetto in the territories annexed to the Reich. Its north-eastern part became what is now called the Ghetto Field, where those who died or were murdered in the ghetto were buried. More than forty-five thousand people lie here, in individual and mass graves.

The Ghetto Field looks nothing like the rest of the cemetery: no stone architecture, just even rows of low markers and wide empty stretches, because many burials were never identified. In one corner you can see grave pits dug in 1944 that were never filled.

In 1956 a monument to the victims of the ghetto and the extermination camps was unveiled here, an obelisk carrying the motif of a broken oak. The field, neglected for decades after the war, was only put in order systematically from the 1990s.

Protection and the burial database

The cemetery entered the heritage register on 17 September 1980 under the number A/276, and in 1984 a committee formed to save it. Conservation work has run intermittently since the 1990s, covering individual monuments as well as the pre-burial house.

On 16 February 2015 the President of Poland designated the ensemble "Łódź — the multicultural landscape of an industrial city" a Historic Monument. The New Jewish Cemetery is one of its five components, alongside the Old Cemetery on Ogrodowa Street and several factory-and-housing complexes. The citation names the cemeteries of different faiths explicitly as a reflection of the old city's multicultural make-up.

The community, together with the Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense Foundation, maintains a database of those buried here, holding records on roughly ninety thousand people and still growing. If you are looking for an ancestor's grave, start there: finding a specific plot across forty hectares unaided is effectively impossible.

Getting there

• By public transport — the main gate is on Bracka Street in northern Łódź, in the Bałuty district; a tram or bus from the centre takes about half an hour.
• By car — the grounds are bounded by Bracka, Zagajnikowa, Zmienna and Inflancka streets, with parking on the side roads.
• On foot — about an hour from Łódź Fabryczna station, passing the Survivors' Park and the Radegast station memorial, the deportation point, on the way.
• In one day — the Old Cemetery on Ogrodowa, the Manufaktura complex and the Poznański palace complete the picture of industrial Łódź that this cemetery tells from the other end.

Before you go

This is not a decommissioned monument but a working cemetery belonging to the Jewish community, so the usual rules apply: men cover their heads, voices stay low, nobody walks on the slabs or moves stones. By custom Jewish cemeteries are closed on Shabbat and on festivals, so fix the day of your visit in advance.

An hour covers the main avenue and the Poznański mausoleum. The Ghetto Field, the pre-burial house and the industrialists' sections need two to three hours, and even then you will have seen perhaps a tenth of the ground. The terrain is uneven, partly overgrown, and the paths turn muddy after rain.

Small stones rather than flowers are left on Jewish graves — the oldest and simplest sign that someone came. If you are after a particular grave, begin with the database rather than with walking the sections.

How to get there and practical info

Location

Bracka Street in northern Łódź, Bałuty district — bounded by Bracka, Zagajnikowa, Zmienna and Inflancka streets

Opened

10 November 1892; the first ten and a half hectares were donated by Izrael Poznański

Area

over forty hectares in a hundred and thirty-one sections

Burials

estimated at 180,000 to 230,000 people, including more than 45,000 in the Ghetto Field

Don't miss

the Izrael Poznański mausoleum, the 1898 pre-burial house, the industrialists' sections, Art Nouveau headstones, the Ghetto Field and the 1956 monument

Heritage status

heritage register since 17 September 1980; part of the Historic Monument "Łódź — the multicultural landscape of an industrial city" since 16 February 2015

Time needed

an hour for the main avenue, two to three hours for the Ghetto Field and the historic sections

Etiquette

men cover their heads; closed on Shabbat and Jewish festivals

Current opening times and tickets

official cemetery website with the burial database

When to go