Rejowiec– Then and Now.
Rejowiec- Then
Rejowiec main street - 1984 Friends in Rejowiec 1936-38
Can anyone recognize any of our family ?
Click on photo, to enlarge
The monument, built from the fragments of tombstones found on the site of the old cemetery.
The new gate and fence of the cemetery
Bella, giving Mr Klinovsky a copy of the book “From Rejowiec to Jerusalem” writtenby her mother.
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Rejowiec - Today On Tuesday 19th of August 2003, a group of travellers arrived in Rejowiec. The travellers were ex-residents of Rejowiec or the children of Rejowiec residents. The trip was arranged by Tova Wax, Chairman of the Association of those born in Rejowiec, daughter of Jerucham Wax -previous Chairman of the Association. At the Rejowiec Municipality building, the group was greeted by the deputy Mayor and his staff. In his speech he mentioned that he was happy to host the group. After the welcome reception, we went to see the estate and residence of Bodner, which is still impressive today. This is a large two storey house surrounded by wide expanses of lawn and groups of trees. On our way there we passed the school where our parents had been pupils before the second World War, which still stands today. Then we went to the cemetery, the main focus of our visit to Rejowiec. After the second World war there was not one undamaged tombstone left standing in the cemetery. Anything that had not been destroyed during the war was destroyed later by the residents of the place who used the tombstones to line the sidewalks. The whole site of the cemetery became a garbage dump. The renovation of the cemetery began by chance. Sara Rab, one of the ex-Rejowiec residents applied to the Municipality of Rejowiec to obtain various documents and papers (her son Shimon Rabb, and his family were part of the group visiting Rejowiec that day). In the Rejowiec archives there is a librarian by the name of Mrs Klinovsky, whose husband is interested in the history of the village and is planning to write a book about the subject. Mr Klinovsky took upon himself the task of putting up a monument and a fence around the cemetery. The funds for the monument were donated by ex-Rejowiec residents in Israel and abroad. The funds for the fence were donated by the Fechter family from Baltimore, USA. We held a ceremony at the cemetery, to reveal the monument and the surrounding fence. The monument was built of pieces of the tombstones found on the cemetery site. At the base of the monument a plaque was mounted. The plaque was brought from Israel by Tova Wax and is engraved in Hebrew, English and Polish “In memory of the Rejowiec martyrs who perished in the holocaust”. On the gate of the fence surrounding the cemetery, we mounted another plaque, which we had also brought with us from Israel, engraved in Hebrew, English, and Polish, saying “Jewish Cemetery”. The ceremony was impressive and moving. Many of the people living there today attended, including the deputy mayor and his staff. During the ceremony I presented Mr Klinovsky with a copy of the book “From Rejowiec to Jerusalem” written by my late mother Doba Buchstein. After the ceremony we walked around the village and some of us identified the houses where our parents had lived. We saw the two village pumps that had been such a central part of village life, and we saw the place where the synagogue had stood. It had been established in 1923 and then destroyed during the second World War. It seems that the village has not changed much since our parents lived there, before the second World War. The houses look dilapidated and judging by the coffeehouse that we visited, this is an extremely quiet little village, with no activity, and no younger generation. written by Bella (nee Buchstein) Dax. |
History of Rejowiec - click HERE
This page was last updated on 29/05/05 By Baruch Krotman