Monday, August 10, 2020
Over 150 Jewish gravestones pillaged by Hitler’s troops to build a road found buried under small town market square
Over 150 Jewish gravestones have been found under a market square in a small town in southern Poland.
The grizzly discovery was made in the town of Leżajsk, where they were laid during Nazi-Germany's WII occupation to harden the road surface.
The find, which is the biggest discovery of 'matzevot' in Poland in recent years, is all the more valuable because some of them have retained their original colours and painted lettering, which surviving headstones in the local Jewish cemetery have lost over the years.
The stones were found during road construction when workers removed a layer of asphalt on the town's market square.
They were discovered about 20 cm below the surface and covered a stretch of road of almost 30 metres on south-west frontage of the market square.
Initially, when workers removed the asphalt, they found a layer of bricks in a herringbone pattern.
It was originally suspected that this was probably made in the 19th or at the turn of the 20th century when the town was part of Galicia in the Austrian partition.
However, when the layer of bricks was removed to reveal the headstones, it became clear that the work was carried out during World War Two.
Some of the headstones still retain gold lettering and coloured painting. The blue, green, yellow and red colours of the inscriptions are clear and vivid.
Ornamental crowns, candlesticks, flowers, lions and hands are perfectly visible. One has gold-painted letters.
Around one hundred are whole, apart from the traditional rounded heads, which were removed most likely to make it easier to lay them close together.
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