New Jewish Cemetery

After the city of Kazimierz was incorporated into Kraków in 1800, the Austrian authorities forced the closure of the old Jewish cemetery in ul. Szeroka. The question of local church cemeteries in Kraków was regulated in a similar manner at that time. As they were generally situated next to dense residential development, they were closed.

The efforts of the Jewish Community to acquire land for a new cemetery soon met with success. A plot lying outside the developed part of Kazimierz, on the edge of the settlement of Grzegórzki next to today’s ul. Miodowa was purchased from the Order of Saint Augustine. The cemetery was expanded three times in the 19th century, with the last expansion taking place in 1899. Early in the 20th century, it covered approximately 20 ha (50 acres). A new funeral hall with brick decorated façades, designed by Władysław Kleinberger, whose neo-Romanesque form has been preserved without major changes, was put into use in 1903.

In 1920s, the commune was faced with the need to build yet another cemetery: it was opened in 1932 in ul. Jerozolimska, next to the already existing cemetery of the Podgórze Jewish Community. Burials in the cemetery in ul. Miodowa continued, albeit only in family tombs and graves that had been purchased earlier.

During the second world war the Germans ordered that the cemetery in ul. Jerozolimska be razed to the ground, and so after the war all the burials of necessity returned to ul. Miodowa. Today a few tens of burials take place here every year. Today’s cemetery covers an area of 19 ha (47 acres) and comprises approximately 10,000 tombs, with the oldest one dating to 1809. It is the resting place of the most famous Kraków Jews from the 19th century to this day. Worth mentioning are the painter Maurycy Gottlieb (d. 1879) and the Deputy Mayor of the City, Józef Sare (d. 1929).