The Story of the Jewish Community in Wolbrom

Wolbrom After the Holocaust

Commemoration in Wolbrom

The monument at the Wolbrom cemetery The ravine where the graves are located. The narrow path leading down to the site is visible in the foreground; the vertical marker of one of the graves and the fences surrounding them can be seen in the center David Shapell is saying kaddish for his father, Benjamin Schapelski, who was killed in this site. Two of the mass graves are marked with horizontally placed plaques. The horizontally placed plaque is inscribed with a verse from a Polish poem by Wladyslaw Broniewski The horizontally placed plaque is inscribed with a verse from a Polish poem by Wladyslaw Broniewski The third mass grave is marked by a vertical marker that was set up by the Polish authorities and bears the inscription: “Fellow Citizens and Jewish Martyrs, Residents of Wolbrom”

A few years after the war, the government of Poland affixed a memorial plaque in Wolbrom’s Jewish cemetery in memory of the 800 Jews of the town and its surrounds who were murdered and buried in the nearby forest. In 1988, a monument to the 4,500 Jews of the town who perished during the Holocaust was erected on the same site. A few gravestones at the cemetery still remained standing, but nothing remained of the community's handsome and unique synagogue; the residents of the city and its surroundings dismantled the building and used its bricks for their houses. One Beit Midrash became a warehouse, while another was turned into a women's monastery.

The last Jews of Wolbrom were murdered in a ravine in the forest near the town. For many years the site was neglected and abandoned. Only a slim cement border marked the three mass graves, which had been overgrown by grass and vegetation.

In 1979 David Shapell (Schapelski) and his wife Fela, both Holocaust survivors, returned to Poland for the first time since the war. After visiting the mass graves in Wolbrom, the Shapell family decided to commemorate the site and its victims; they had the surface of the graves cemented, and erected a fence around them with a gate.

Since then, they have been returning every year, bringing their children and grandchildren with them. They walk down the path that the Jews of Wolbrom took on that fateful day in September 1942, and visit the site of the mass graves where they remember their relatives who were murdered during the Holocaust: Benjamin and Chaya (nee Gelbard) Schapelski, and their daughters Yocheved and Rachel. Three other children - David, Nathan and Sala - survived.

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