Published: 11 December 2017
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich described the excavation as the worst desecration of a Jewish cemetery he has seen during the 17 years he has been a rabbi in the country.
Jewish religious law holds that bodies only should be disturbed once they are buried under limited circumstances, such as saving lives.
A day after visiting the construction site in Siemiatycze, a small town that was about 60 percent Jewish before World War II, Schudrich showed The Associated Press photos of large mounds of earth with human bones, including a large part of a human skull.
FULL STORY Jewish cemetery in Poland dug up, bodies dumped to make way for parking lot (AP/Haaretz)
AND SEE
Polish Jews torn over government’s emphasis on righteous neighbours (Haaretz)
Christian with Jewish roots slated to become Poland’s New PM (Haaretz)
Photo: Human remains which had been removed from an old Jewish cemetery have been dumped in huge mounds in Siemiatycze, Poland (Aleksander Schwarz/AP)