A Righteous Avenue and lapidarium will be created in Bródno

“Of course I accept this idea. We will reconstruct the wall of the cemetery from the side of Rzeszowska Street, as well as the street itself, as it is in really bad shape today. The new part of the wall will include a lapidarium and from the side of Rzeszowska Street there will be a Righteous Avenue” – announced Grzegorz Zawistowski, mayor of Targówek.

The mayor added that the Warsaw Jewish Community is preparing a project of the avenue and the lapidarium. Zawistowski offered the Community his help with official and formal matters, such as getting the building permit.

According to the Warsaw Jewish Community, it will be the biggest lapidarium in Europe. There are around 10 thousand Jewish tombstones in Warsaw that need to be saved.

Piotr Kadlćik, chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Community said: “The cemetery itself looks terribly. The tombstones are torn out of the graves. As it is impossible to establish where they come from, we want to create a lapidarium similar to the one in Kazimierz nad Wisłą. There will be no more funerals at the cemetery, because we don’t know where the graves are exactly. We have a tradition that when someone buys an area for their grave, it becomes their property, just like any other parcel. Another person cannot build on someone else’s property without their consent. In this case there is no way to get such a consent”.

The chairman also adds that the Community won’t be able to cover all the costs of the avenue and lapidarium, that is why a declaration of the Targówek authorities concerning their participation in the project is necessary.

The mayor Grzegorz Zawistowski announced that the whole project – the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations and the lapidarium – will be probably finished until June 2012.