Type of place

Information about the crime

A young Jewish woman from Rajbrot was murdered in the forest. She came from one of the few Jewish families in that village. The body was buried at the site. The location of the grave was possible thanks to the precise indication of the descendant of the man who buried the woman’s body.

“The daughter of a man who buried a murdered Jewish girl remembered this place. This is the second person who told me about this case. This man worked in the field and that’s why he was ordered to bury the murdered girl. She was murdered in this grove and buried here, using the strength of the man who worked in the field. I suppose she was local because there were several Jewish families in Rajbrot before the war. ” (Rajbrot, April 6, 2021)

Commemoration

The place of the grave was marked with a wooden matzevah in 2022 as part of the project  “Reference points  – marking 25 Jewish war graves with wooden matzevot ”. The project is an attempt to find a way of marking these sites before they can be commemorated. Marking forgotten Jewish war graves with wooden matzevot is a subtle  intervention in the landscape, reminding about what remains invisible, yet present in the memory of local communities. Being only a temporary commemoration, wooden matzevot invite local communities to discuss and take action, to discover the places, and perhaps to start their own memory practice related to them or to initiate a permanent commemoration.

You can read more about the project here: https://tinyurl.com/2p9ar52f

The project was carried out thanks to the  funding from The Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland (Stowarzyszenie Żydowski Instytut Historyczny) and The Matzevah Foundation.

IDENTIFICATION OF THE GRAVE BASED ON NON INVASIVE RESEARCH

On April 6, 2021, an on-site inspection was carried out in a place precisely indicated as a single grave of a young woman (GPS: N 49 ° 49.253 ‘E 020 ° 28.584’).

The relief model (LiDAR) is not helpful in this case.
No aerial photography query has been conducted for this area.

Contact and cooperation

We are still looking for information on the identity of the victims and the location of Jewish graves in Rajbrot. If you know something more, write to us at the following address: fundacjazapomniane@gmail.com. 

Bibliography

Recording of the Zapomniane Foundation (audio file), Iwona Z. resident of Rajbrot, subject and keywords: Jewish graves in Rajbrot; exp. Anna Brzyska, Rajbrot, April 6, 2021.

We have collected the materials about this village thanks to the funding provided by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance as part of the project “The rural Holocaust. Collecting and safeguarding the never recorded testimonies 100 forgotten Jewish graves 2021-2022” and also thanks to the support of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Warsaw.