Sunday, September 03, 2006

 

About this Website

Welcome to the Lomza Virtual Jewish Cemeteries website!

This website is intended to be a collaborative project for those interested in the historical and genealogical aspects of these cemeteries.

The photographs here were taken and donated by Antoni Dudo, a native of Lomza. Antoni has made a thorough historical study of the two Jewish cemeteries in Lomza. He has photographed all gravestones and stone fragments he could find. Only those with inscriptions (or portions of inscriptions) will be presented here.

We welcome comments pertaining to the stones and the people they represent, including translations and other historical and genealogical information. If you are related to the subject of a stone, please note that fact in a comment. You may find long lost relatives that way.

We will try to use the Polish renderings of the surnames so that what you see here will match the vital records.

By way of background, the Old Cemetery was in use from 1822 through 1892. It was destroyed around the time of WWII, but the extant stones were re-installed afterwards and the hillside is maintained as open space with a well-manicured lawn. The New Cemetery opened in 1892 and was used through the 1940's. It was heavily damaged in WWII but many of the stones were simply toppled over and remained face down, so their inscriptions were preserved. It was left to become overgrown, but various groups have begun caring for it, so it is now well kept and many of the stones have been re-erected.

We are starting with photos from the New Cemetery. For each stone, the first two numbers are the sector where the stone is located, and the next three are the stone's number within that sector, as shown on the sector plans.

We hope you enjoy this website!

Gary L. Maher
New Jersey, USA

Comments:
Gary,
You have done some very good work. I think it will be more helpful if you consider thumbnails and/or name indexing for the images. The browsing method causes significant data transfer and synchronization problems that make it difficult to view the images and find relatives. It will get much much worse as the number of images increase. It will be especially bad for individuals with low speed lines, but even my high speed line is having difficulties keeping up with the image/caching and downloading.
 
Thank you. Yes, I agree. This is not the best format. I don't know of a gallery-type (gallery.menalto.com)website, and gallery won't work where I have webspace. Do you have any suggestions for a better website to host this content?

I just tweaked the site to archive daily and permit individual pages for each stone, so smaller pages are now available.
 
The intent is commendable, but the organization is absolutely horrible.
 
I know it's not the best (as noted above), but it will have to do for now. At least the information is available to the world.
 
When i visited the new cemetery last week, there was a stone of someone who is very well related to me ... as the stone had fallen over and was cracked, i wanted to have it fixed. A caretaker who was working there wanted approximately US$250 to fix and maintain it but i did not have the money with me to pay him. If anyone knows a way for me to get this done please let me know at sheldon.brickman@aig.com ... thank you
 
Gary...I am a descendant of The Geilczynski family. You typed that you were also a Geilczynski. I just started trying to put together geneology information from my father and would love to see if you could be of any help. Please contact me samyudin@hotmail.com
 
I wanted to say thank you, for the amazing job you have done. I have been to the cemetery both the old and the new. I tried to find my great grandfather's grave and was overwhelmed by how destroyed the cemetery was. As well as my inability to read the I the headstones since they were not in English.
I still could not find my great grandfather's who died around 1919. I looked at all of the pictures. I am very impressed with the big job you have done. This website is still amazing for those of us who are searching. I am so grateful for the time it must have taken to prepare this.
 
My great grandfather was Rav Shayme Cramkowsky. He was the Rav of Gac and passed away around 1903. Could it be that he was buried in the Lomza cemetery?
 
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