Before the Holocaust, Europe’s largest Jewish community lived in Poland. One third of Warsaw’s pre-war inhabitants were Jews. The disappearance of such a significant portion of the population left a void in the life of post-war Poland, but also made Poland more homogeneous than before. The Jewish cemetery in Warsaw on Okopowa Street is one of the relics of that lost past that persistently reminds one of previous Jewish-Polish coexistence. Quite ironically, it also reminds of the scope of the loss, being the largest Jewish graveyard in Europe.^[1]
Today, the cemetery functions as a special place of memory that testifies to the rich history of the Jewish community in pre-war Poland as well as to its tragic end. It stresses in a very particular way “the absence of a Jewish presence” in the post-Holocaust reality. However, this cemetery’s importance reaches far beyond being a simple memorial site. One should view it not only as a reminder of annihilation and death, but rather as a complex cultural text that offers multidimensional insights into the life of the Jewish community in Warsaw.^[2]
The semiotic method enables us to scrutinize all the elements of the cultural code that can be found within the cemetery. This article aims to demonstrate that the successful decoding of cultural markers offers the possibility to explore the inner dynamics of Warsaw’s Jewish community on the one hand and Polish-Jewish interaction on the other. The cemetery clearly reflects changes in the ideology of Warsaw’s Jews as well as their social and cultural metamorphosis. As will be shown, the semiotic approach to social history helps to understand more of the nature of modernization, acculturation, and integration of Jews in Poland. In this aspect, the past is perceived as the process of crossing different kinds of boundaries: cultural, social, and national.
Therefore the cemetery is a very important source for the history of Polish Jews. It provides us with a wealth of data that helps fill in the gap concerning their history and culture. Together with the Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish press from the period, archival collections, and statistical data, it contributes to the state of knowledge on changes in Warsaw’s Jewish community in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In this article, I wish to focus in particular on the second half of the 19th century, a period of important cultural transformation.
In order to understand the specificity of the cultural milieu of the capital’s Jews, it is necessary to explain briefly their situation in Warsaw. The origins of the Jewish kehillah may be traced back to the 14th century, but there are quite justified presumptions that Jews lived there earlier – from at least the 13th century. They were usually involved in trade, craft, or propinacia (distilling and selling of alcohol) and arenda (leasing and sub-leasing of estates). The first actual source that preserves information about Warsaw’s Jews is a complaint from 1414 involving a rich Jewish merchant and banker Lazarus and a townsman of Czersk.^[3]
We know that the oldest Jewish settlement in Warsaw was located in the so-called platea Judeorum (Jewish street). There is also information about a synagogue, a ritual bath, and a cemetery that ceased to exist some time in the second half of the 15th century, probably during the pogrom of 1483.^[4] In 1527, King Sigizmund I granted to Warsaw’s townspeople the privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis^[5] and this ended the legal presence of Jews in the city for a certain period. As a result, many Jewish families settled in Polish towns under the jurisdiction of Poland’s powerful nobility that did not enjoy municipal legal rights. Beginning in 1775, the Jews were also allowed to settle and build houses in Praskie Przedmieście (Warsaw’s Praga suburbs).^[6]
It was the nineteenth century that saw the most radical and far-reaching changes in Warsaw’s Jewish community. The partitions of Poland (1772-1795) opened a new chapter in the history of Poland’s Jews and dramatic shifts in the European political scene had a strong impact upon them. Their sudden entrance into absolutist empires radically changed their situation. The introduction of new general laws, aimed at a broad unification of Jews with the rest of the society, catalyzed social and cultural transformations. The imperial interference started to be visible in many aspects of Jewish life, like customs, language, names, clothes, appearance, and family life.
The status of the Polish lands in the 19th century in general, and Warsaw in particular, is troublesome. After the third partition of Poland in 1795, the city was incorporated into the Prussian Kingdom. From 1807 to 1812 it functioned as the capital of the Duchy of Warsaw, a semi-sovereign state depending very much on Napoleon. When Napoleon was defeated in Russia, the Russian Empire occupied the Duchy for two years. As a result it was liquidated in 1815. Under the agreements of the Congress of Vienna, the Kingdom of Poland (also known as the Congress Kingdom) was created in 1815. With small exceptions, the Kingdom was a territorial continuation of the Grand Duchy. It was joined to the Russian Empire as part of a personal union, whereby the Russian Tsar also became the king of Poland. The Kingdom had its own constitution and still enjoyed some autonomy. However, the situation changed after the defeat of the November Uprising in 1831. The repressed Kingdom slowly lost its autonomy. The most dramatic moment came with the defeat of the January Uprising in 1864, when the Kingdom of Poland lost its autonomy completely, although it was never formally abolished.^[7] The new Privislinskii Krai – the name that Russian bureaucrats gave Poland – was fully controlled by the Russian Empire. Therefore one should remember that the inner dynamics of Warsaw (and Central Poland) were shaped under different circumstances than the rest of the Polish lands after the partitions. Respectively, various factors influenced the transformation of Warsaw’s Jewish community.
It is difficult to find proper terms to describe different aspects of the Jewish transformation in 19th century Western and Eastern Europe. There are many in use: emancipation, secularization, enlightenment, modernization, Germanization/Polonization/Russification, assimilation, acculturation, and integration. However, some of them, like assimilation, have been discredited by a number of scholars as too vague, too imprecise, or too value-laden. The problem of terminology is too broad and complicated an issue to be discussed here.^[8] Only the careful explanation of what a given term is taken to mean within the confines of a specific text helps avoid confusion and misunderstanding.^[9]
In Warsaw during the second half of the 19th century, Jewish integration and acculturation into the surrounding culture was a highly visible phenomenon compared with the situation in the rest of Eastern Europe or even with the rest of the Polish lands.^[10] As Marcin Wodziński argues, the first generation of Jewish modernizers in the Kingdom of Poland (the 1820-1830s) chose integration with Polish culture as integration with a local form of a broader European context. It has to be said that they felt a strong intellectual connection with German culture and language. Due to Warsaw’s openness to different cultural milieus,^[11] and particularly due to the influence of German Haskalah, acculturating into Polish culture was one of the options faced by the first Jewish integrationists in Warsaw, though it was not a dominating one. By the second generation of integrationists, however, ideology had changed. One can notice a shift from Haskalah’s principle of loyalty to the ruler (namely, the Tsar) toward support of a particular ethnic group within the Empire (Poles). The pro-Polish direction of integration was getting stronger and finally began to be perceived as an autonomic value. Polish language became a significant cultural marker and an element of identity. An important shift took place, as the “Polish option” in the 1850s and 1860s was no longer only an element of cultural choice. It became a path to solidarity with the Polish nation and Polish patriotism.^[12] The “Polish-Jewish brotherhood” of the 1860s was the climax of this process and provides clear evidence of the ideological transformation that took place.^[13] Even when the brotherhood failed, it left clear marks on the collective memory of that generation.
The Russian Empire could support modernization but not pro-Polish acculturation of Jews. Thus the policy of Russification, which was particularly intensified after the fall of the January Uprising, not only mounted restrictions on Polish cultural life but also constrained the life of those Jews who chose the “Polish option”. Ezra Mendelsohn correctly wrote about the very specific situation of Jewish integration in the Kingdom of Poland, stating that here the Jewish elite were assimilating into the cultural and social life of another persecuted nation, and not into the culture of the ruling political power.^[14]
The second half of the 19th century was a time of rapid modernization that also brought interesting and far-reaching changes to visual representations of Judaism in Warsaw. The cemetery, as a cultural text, reflects important shifts that took place at that time. The first significant break with tradition dates to 1855 when the first epitaph written in Polish using the Latin alphabet appeared on a Jewish tombstone. This opened a time of modernization of the graveyard itself, which led finally to its reorganization and the emergence of a new type of sepulchral art as well as to changes in burial customs. Before the turn of the century, the first stage of the metamorphosis was completed.^[15]
There had been no Jewish burial place in Warsaw after their expulsion from the city in the 17th century. This changed when Jews were again allowed to settle in Warsaw’s suburbs. In 1780, Szmul (Samuel) Jakubowicz Zbytkower, a court banker, asked King Stanislav Augustus for permission to establish a cemetery in Targówek (near Warsaw’s Praga suburbs in the present-day district of Bródno), which at that time was royal land. The king agreed to grant the land to Zbytkower on a perpetual lease. The first official burial took place only after four years. However, even before the king’s decision, there were unofficial burials on the same spot.^[16] In 1785, Zbytkower founded Hevrah Kadishah (Heb. – a burial society), probably the second or the third one in the Warsaw area. The emergence of another organization of this kind led to many conflicts between the Warsaw and Praga communities.
Warsaw’s Jews also wanted to establish their own cemetery, and in 1806 the government accepted their request. One year later the graveyard at Wola (presently Okopowa Street in Warsaw district) was already used by the Warsaw kehillah (community). It was situated next to Christian cemeteries that had existed there since 1792.^[17] During the 19th century, this burial place proved to be too limited for the still-growing community. Government documents from the Central Archive in Warsaw reveal important information about problems with the graveyard’s extension.^[18] There were even some cases when it was enlarged and new lands were used for burials before official permission was given. On one occasion, even controversial second-layer burials took place (e.g., in 1831, 1843, 1855), when it was not possible to extend the cemetery on time.^[19]
From the time of its establishment, the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw on Okopowa Street underwent many changes. From a rather homogeneous, traditional graveyard, it evolved into a heterogeneous burial place. Its diversity reflects that of the Jewish community in Warsaw. The cemetery is a text of a Jewish culture that was very much influenced by the surrounding gentile world. Therefore, it presents a unique mosaic containing different cultural elements, oscillating between Jewish tradition and gentile influence. The cemetery, with its various cultural manifestations, is strongly linked to the question of the identity and self-perception of Warsaw’s Jews.

THE CEMETERY: TRADITION AND MODERNITY

In the 19th century, Jewish supporters of modernization (Żydzi postępowi) started to regard Hevrah Kadishah as a backward and superstitious organization.^[20] This was due to the generally negative attitude of reformers toward the traditional part of the community, which was very much against change.^[21] However, in the second half of the 19th century, when the progressive faction gained control of Dozór Bóżniczy,^[22] they managed to introduce a number of reforms. Major changes occurred in the organization and layout of the cemetery as well as in funeral customs. The process of the graveyard’s modernization was strongly supported by the city government. It led to many conflicts between the traditional and progressive parts of Jewish society. In particular, disagreement arose around the Warsaw Hevrah Kadishah, which up to the first half of 19th century was fully controlled by Orthodox Jews. Izraelita, a Polish-Jewish newspaper published weekly in Warsaw, provides rich evidence of these tensions.
It is important to stress that reforms proposed by the progressive faction did not make the traditional customs disappear. The division of Warsaw’s Jewish community was also visible in the sphere of burial customs. Two separate worlds existed next to each other. Innovations introduced by Żydzi postępowi were boycotted by the conservative part of Jewish kehillah each time they sensed a violation of halakhah (rules shaping and regulating Jewish behavior and ritual).
There were many controversial innovations. One new thing that became a part of modern funeral customs was the catafalque. Cemetery records note that many progressive families used it.^[23] The custom of exposing a body on a catafalque was accepted under the influence of the Christian tradition. Also, the room where bodies were kept until the funeral was decorated in the gentile fashion.
Changes were visible in the use of hearses and in the dress of cemetery workers. As there were many complaints concerning their neglected appearance, new suits were introduced. A modern-looking hearse was used (Fig. 1.). However, the new custom of a coachman sitting on top of the hearse (and not walking by its side) was strongly boycotted by traditional Jews because they found it disrespectful.^[24]

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/ag1.jpg>

Fig. 1. The hearse in the photographs comes from the Jewish community in Łódź. However, we know that it was made according to the Warsaw model.

Another controversy in the second half of the 19th century was the idea of burial in a coffin. This long-discussed issue was a bone of contention between the modern and traditional parts of the Jewish community.^[25] According to the rules of Jewish rabbinical law, neither this custom nor the cremation of bodies was acceptable.^[26] One has to realize that the struggle between the traditional and the modern was hard-fought and any detail that could change the score was of utmost importance. Izraelita reports that even the introduction of a simple bell at the cemetery gate caused controversy.^[27] Therefore, it may be quite surprising that in 1888 there was a case in which Żydzi postępowi managed to conduct such a drastic violation of tradition as an autopsy.^[28]
The cemetery enjoyed a very bad reputation both within the Jewish community and outside, and the reformers also tried to address this as well. Numerous incidents of more or less serious crimes as well as tomb robbing and theft made them introduce new regulations to increase security in the graveyard. The ever-present beggars were banned from the cemetery.^[29] The other problem, not easy to solve, was the low moral standards of the cemetery workers who lived at the entrance to the graveyard. They were notorious for getting drunk and behaving scandalously. The cemetery, as we read in the sources, was also a meeting spot for prostitutes and their clients.^[30] This created a very negative image of the Jewish community and therefore Żydzi postępowi went to great efforts to change it.
The sensibility of Żydzi postępowi to gentiles’ critique on Jewish “backwardness” was significant. The elite of modernized Warsaw Jewry, who had aspirations to integrate into Polish society always took these criticisms very seriously. Therefore, many changes in the visual representations of Judaism took place, aiming at the removal of all sorts of possible excuses that could provoke any negative comments from the gentile side. It is important to note that modernization’s supporters were often caught between the hammer of Jewish tradition and the anvil of gentile expectations or demands. The reorganization of the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw has to be viewed as one of these acts that responded to the idea of cultural adjustment to the standards of surrounding society. This went beyond the traditional religious concept of hilul ha-Shem – profaning and dishonoring God by improper Jewish behavior or wrong deeds – and demonstrated a new kind of awareness of and sensibility to gentile society and opinion.

REORGANIZATION OF THE GRAVEYARD

Originally the cemetery was divided into sections, with each section further divided into rows (see Scheme № 1). Women, men, and children were buried separately; families could not be placed together. Traditional matsevot (gravestones) faced east, which in the symbolic geography of east European Jewry meant toward Jerusalem. This expressed religious hope and expectation. In some measure it was linked to the idea of eternity or, in other words, to the open dimension of time after death. The size and shape of traditional tombstones was more or less the same. All these things we can see in the model of the traditional section – yellow here symbolizes the eastward direction of the graves.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/ag2.jpg>

Scheme № 1.

The reorganization of the burial place meant changes in the semiotic landscape of the cemetery.^[31] The traditional layout held particular meanings – being buried in one place and not another conveyed certain information. When the metamorphosis started, the traditional sepulchral stratification was disturbed.
New rules were introduced in the modern sections.^[32] In 1856, Adam Epstein, at the time a vice-chairman of the Jewish community, proposed the idea of family graves.^[33] It caused a lot of controversy because traditional Jews were strongly opposed to the idea. Finally, the supporters of modernization won the argument, when Rabbi Dov Ber Meisels (1798-1878) stated that such burial is not against halakhah. He recommended, however, that in order to avoid provoking the traditional members of the community, all family graves should be located in one special place. Thus a new division was introduced into the cemetery – that of “modern” and “traditional” sections. Choosing to be buried in one section over the other was tantamount to stating one’s identification with the modernist or traditionalist camp.
Tombstones in modern sections did not always face Jerusalem. They were oriented toward inner paths within a section, toward a potential passer-by. The same is true of gravestones at the outskirts of each modern section – they faced alleys that divided one section from the other. This change was also reflected in epitaphs, on which one finds phrases containing invocations to a possible reader (which will be discussed later). So “the eternity direction” known from the traditional quarter was replaced here by “the present direction”. In semiotic terms, the grave was still linked to the world of living.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/ag3.jpg>

Fig. 2. A family grave.

The introduction of family graves could change the order of tombstones in a row when members of the same family were buried close to each other but not in the same row. In such cases, in order to emphasize their family relationship, they had fences put around their graves – sometimes across some rows. It is significant that even after death they wished to be perceived as a family.
The size and the shape of tombstones also varied to a large degree from the traditional matsevah. Sometimes modern gravestones were so huge that they broke the monotonous line of a traditional row in which all matsevot were comparable in size and shape. This was not only against the traditional layout but also against burial custom, which held that ostentatious gravestones were unwelcome.
There is one more interesting phenomenon concerning the reorganization of the cemetery. One can sometimes discover an amazing thing in the modern sections where the matsevot are not oriented toward Jerusalem. In a row where tombstones generally face west, there are some that break the line and are turned to the east in the traditional manner. Taking into consideration the more traditional shape of these gravestones and their Hebrew inscriptions, one may be sure that their direction is not coincidental. This is a sign that somebody buried here perceived himself/herself (or were perceived by their family) as Żyd postępowy, because they chose to be buried in the modern section of the cemetery. At the same time, they felt more connected to tradition than other people buried in the section or at least they wanted to express such a link by having the matsevah face east.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/ag4.jpg>

Scheme № 2.

To understand all the changes more clearly, let us have a look at the Scheme № 2. Colors symbolize different directions: checked squares – east, gray – west, black – north, and white – south. In a row where all the matsevot face west, there is one traditional (checked) that breaks the line and is turned to the east. We can see that the sizes of tombstones differ. Family graves are marked by a line around them, enclosing them together and cutting across rows. Sometimes a matsevah faces more than one direction (e.g. a checked/black square in the upper right corner). This happened when a tombstone was erected at the very corner of the section and face two alleys perpendicular to each other.
The maskilim (enlightened Jews) made an attempt to make the cemetery look modern. In order to achieve this, they tried to remove all signs of negligence. In the 1850s, some hundred trees (mainly chestnuts and poplars) were planted under the supervision of the already-mentioned famous Warsaw banker Adam Epstein. However, weeds and bushes growing on the cemetery could not be removed as it was against halakhah. This caused problems because Christian cattle-keepers bribed a graveyard guard in order to graze their herds there. We know from a report from 1856 that there were at times as many as a few dozen cows in the cemetery.^[34]

ARTISTIC CHANGES

The traditional shape for tombstones was that typical of East European matsevah. Usually it was a stele with different kind of arches as a finial. An inscription was usually written on one side and divided from the rest of the stone by inner frames. Two-dimensional sculptures were more often than not placed above the inscription. Their role was either decorative or symbolic, or both.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/ag5.jpg>

Fig. 3. Shapes and styles of modern Jewish tombstones.

With the modernization of the cemetery came a new burial fashion (Fig. 3). Jews from the middle and upper classes could afford to order more splendid and larger tombstones. Sometimes their size was really enormous, such as the vault on Franciszka Eiger’s grave (1895). New shapes and styles were based on patterns drawn from Christian cemeteries. Many modern Jewish tombstones were identical to Christian ones, except for the language and some symbolic motifs used. As we know, some of them were even made by gentile tradesmen from expensive stones imported from abroad.^[35] Some represented different historical styles that were popular in the 19th century, like neo-gothic or neo-classical. There are even some very fine examples of art nouveau.
One of the most important changes was a shift in the use of symbolic motifs. Many gentile symbols, which had a particular meaning in their original background, were adapted to the new matrix. One may ask: were those who decided to copy certain symbols oblivious of their primary meaning? Probably not. Even if they had been, I believe that they would not have cared much. Many examples of sepulchral gentile motifs appeared in the Jewish graveyard because of the specific cemetery fashion. Many Jews might have copied them without any hesitation since these depictions had once found their way to the Jewish burial place. However, a careful selection from a variety of gentile symbols proves that the motifs were actually well considered before the motifs were used. Of course, there were no crosses in the Jewish cemetery, but even some non-Christian motifs that were popular in neighboring Protestant or Christian cemeteries did not appear in the Jewish cemetery. A good example here is the skull and crossbones (tibias), a universal symbol of death, passing away, and the vanity of human life. The Jewish traditional aversion to figural art is clearly the reason why we do not find tibias displayed in the Jewish cemetery.
New motifs that appeared in modern sections of the cemetery are mostly connected with the sepulchral idea of vanitas: a broken column, an urn (sometimes with a mourning veil), a sarcophagus, broken branches/a broken tree/a broken flower,^[36] torches, a ruined wall, a poppy-head (refering to death as the eternal sleep), a butterfly (signifying the transition of the soul from one world to the other), an owl. Some of the traditional motifs found new forms and/or gained slightly different meanings, such as a bunch of flowers now used to depict a mourning wreath or the star of David, which was used as a national symbol following the establishment of the Zionist movement. There is also a group of emblems graven on tombstones that refer to professions, like the snake and caduceus (pharmacology), a compasses and a set square (architecture), or a lyre (poetry) (Fig. 4).

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/ag6.jpg>

Fig. 4. Fragment of a tombstone.

Among the traditional motifs still present in the modern sections, we find: Cohen’s blessing hands, books, a candlestick, a bowl and jug for Levi’s descendents, a money box symbolizing charity (sometimes with a hand donating a coin), the Tablets, a bird (pigeon), and griffins. Modern tombstones decorated with these images are still rooted in Jewish tradition.
As with the choice of language for epitaphs, the choice of a particular motif can help us determine if the person buried in the modern section sympathized more with the traditionalists or progressives. Each tombstone can be an individual manifestation of an ideological outlook. The case of the Warsaw cemetery shows clearly that sepulchral art is linked to the problem of identity and different forms of its manifestation.

LANGUAGE OF EPITAPHS

The acculturation of Warsaw’s Jews is most visible the in epitaphs they placed on their tombstones. Since the second half of the 19th century, inscriptions in the modern section of the cemetery can be found in Polish, Russian, German or even French, instead of – and often in addition to – the traditional Hebrew.
Epitaphs were written only in Hebrew^[37] until the early 19th century. At this time, an initial transformation took place and the first German inscription (written with Hebrew characters) appeared on a tombstone: “Ruhestätte des Arthur Sewerin Goldstand, verschieden den 11.XI.1836”. By the order of Dozór Bóżniczy, epitaphs had to be very simple and short, and contain basic information only. In a short period from 1850-1854, another eight German epitaphs appeared. One of them is worth quoting:

Hier ruht Frau Salomea
geb. Joseph Davidsohn
verehelicht Kopel Bernstein
sanften Herzens und gebildeten Geistes
verschied sie, von Eltern, Geschwistern,
Gatten und Kindern beweint
den 10.II.1852

Here rests Mrs. Salomea,
Born to Joseph Davidson,
Married to Kopel Bernstein,
Of tender heart and lofty spirit
She departed, mourned by parents, siblings,
Husband and children,
On 10.II.1852

This text is more obviously quite sophisticated and goes far beyond the initial simplicity requested by Dozór Bóżniczy.
A second step was made in 1855. When Antoni Eisenbaum (1791-1852), the director of the reform rabbinical institute (Szkoła Rabinów), died in 1852, his disciples and graduates wanted to commemorate him by putting a Polish inscription on his tombstone. Dozór Bóżniczy did not accede to their request because the proposed epitaph was not only composed in Polish, but it was to be written in the Latin alphabet. A real Kulturkampf broke out. Finally, after three years of fierce disagreement, the Ministry of Religious Matters accepted the project. In June 1855, the first Polish inscription was placed on a Jewish gravestone. Antoni Eisenbaum’s inscription was a precedent that opened wide the gate to modernization.
Ever since, it became possible to choose the language of one’s epitaph. It was not only a matter of burial fashion, but also a very final decision of one’s cultural affiliation. In some periods, the language and content of an inscription can be treated as an unambiguous manifestation of political beliefs and even national identity. “The Polish-Jewish Brotherhood” of 1861 is a good example. Probably the most famous case from this period is that of Michał Landy, a Jewish student who participated in a Polish-Jewish patriotic demonstration against the Russians. He was shot after taking the cross from the hand of a priest who had fallen before him and died the same day. In this situation, the use of Polish on the inscription on his grave is an interesting testimony of Jewish attitudes towards political realities.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/ag7.jpg>

Fig. 5. Polish as the language of an epitaph.

With a new language came a new outlook (Fig. 5). It is important to note that Polish inscriptions are not translations of Hebrew ones. They represent a new sepulchral quality. In some aspects they followed the layout of Christian-Polish epitaphs, as there was no other example to be used.
There were many changes not only in the organization of carmina sepulcra, but also in the content. The first important element was the use of one name in Hebrew and another one in Polish to designate the same person. In Hebrew inscriptions, we always see a Jewish name with a patronymic (e.g., Moshe ben Arie Leib or Sarah bat Israel), while in Polish ones we usually find a Christian first name together with a family name (e.g., Maurycy Leibowicz or Stanisława Flauman) with the patronymic missing. Polish epitaphs on children’s tombstones interestingly use the father’s name together with the mother’s, something not previously seen in Hebrew epitaphs. On children’s graves, diminutives are often used, such as Wacio instead of Wacław. Moreover, Izraelita reports an incident connected to the prayer El male rahamim, where a cantor mentioned the gentile name of a boy (Julijan) instead of his Jewish name.^[38] The fact that this story was published in a Warsaw newspaper proves how strongly the modernization of burial customs was growing.
Another interesting phenomenon is that the inscription mentions the remaining sponsor of the gravestone. According to the Jewish tradition, erecting a matsevah on the grave was a religious duty. The name of the person who did erected the tombstone is not mentioned, except when a second tombstone replaced an original tombstone that had been destroyed. Under the influence of Christian sepulchral customs, Polish-Jewish inscriptions sometimes also include information about the family of the deceased. The interpersonal emotional relations between the deceased and the living are also displayed. To understand better, let us read an example:

Tu
Spoczywają zwłoki
B.P. IZYDORA
GLUCKSMANN
Przeżywszy lat 47
Zmarł po ciężkiej
I długiej chorobie
Dnia 16 Lipca 1880 r
Pozostawiając <strong>żonę</strong>
<strong>I dzieci</strong> w głębokim
Smutku
Spokój jego duszy

Here
Lies the body of
B.M. IZYDOR
GLUCKSMANN
Who lived 47 years
And died after a serious
And long-lasting sickness
On the 16th of July 1880
Leaving <strong>his wife</strong>
<strong>And children</strong> in deep
Sorrow
May his soul rest in peace

[emphasis by
A. Jagodzinska]

We can notice that a feeling of “deep sorrow” is mentioned here; “grief” (żal) or “mourning” (żałoba) can be found in other epitaphs. This opens an emotional space in the semiotic landscape of the cemetery. Sometimes longer lamentations are incorporated in epitaphs, in which the remaining members of a family express their feelings of loss, sorrow, or grief.
Problems with the calendar are evident in Polish inscriptions because as many as three calendar systems were in use in Warsaw in the second half of the 19th century. In Hebrew, the issue was simple and dates were written according to the Jewish calendar only. However, when creating a text in Polish, the Jews encountered a problem. Should the Jewish date be transferred into a Polish inscription or should the date according to one of the Christian calendar systems be used?^[39] The answer was not simple. On some, particularly early, tombstones we find clear evidence of confusion, when the month system used was Christian, but the year system was Jewish, for example:

MATHIAS ROSEN
urodził się d. 15 sierpnia
5565
umarł dnia 30 grudnia
5626

MATHIAS ROSEN
born on August 15th
5565
died on December 30th
5626

Many Christian-Polish sepulchral formulas were transferred into Jewish-Polish inscriptions. A good example is the typical formula ending the epitaph on a child’s grave: “Powiekszył grono aniołków” (He joined the circle of little angels). This reflected the common belief that a (baptized) child who dies at a very young age is so innocent that he or she is treated as an angel. As we can see, this part of the epitaph, with its a particular Christian context, was accepted in the Jewish cemetery. Jews who wished to have such things written on their children’s graves were either oblivious of its original Christian setting or knew the context, but did not care much about it, finding it proper for a Jewish tombstone, too.
In the Christian tradition, there are two aspects when a prayer is mentioned in an epitaph. The first is when the deceased is “asking” (in the text of an epitaph) for a prayer for their soul and the second when the remaining member(s) of the family are asking the deceased to pray for them. It is amazing to discover both aspects present in the Polish-Jewish carmina sepulcra.

[1]

Przechodniu gdy koło tego grobu wypadnie ci droga
Zmów za tę zacną duszę słów parę do boga, amen!

O, passerby, when your path leads next to this grave,
Pray in a few words to God for this noble soul, amen!

(1910)

This corresponds with what was mentioned earlier about making a tombstone faced the inner paths of the cemetery and its connection with world of living.

[2]

Córko nasza droga
Módl się za nas u boga
A my w wiecznej żałobie
Smutni płaczem po tobie

Our dear daughter
Pray for us in heaven
And we in eternal mourning
Sad, we cry after you

(1875)

It is interesting that Polish poetry even found its way into the Jewish cemetery. An outstanding example is the work of Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584), one of the most famous Polish poets of the Renaissance, who created a set of laments to commemorate his daughter, who passed away at a very young age. Since then, different fragments of his poems have been used in Christian epitaphs, usually on children’s graves. In the Jewish cemetery on the monumental tomb of Franciszka Eiger (died in 1895), we find a paraphrase of the most popular Kochanowski quote, while the original poem was placed on Jakób Lipszyc’s gravestone (died in 1884). Other quotes, mainly from the Bible (e.g., Ps 119; 72; Eccl. 12; 7) or Talmud (Pirke Avot 4) also appear.
In all the cases described above, we notice that the new language brought with it real challenges and not just because of linguistic difficulties. The use of Polish on Jewish gravestones was linked to a new concept of Jewish-Polish identity. And, as was mentioned, the choice of language was a visible sign of cultural choice.

CONCLUSION

The case of the Warsaw graveyard can be seen in two contexts – the first a European one and the second a local, Polish context. Nothing that happened to the Jewish community in Poland in the course of the 19th century could have happened without prior changes in Western European Jewry. Without Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) and the modernization that began in the West, there would not have been any metamorphosis of Jewish culture in the Kingdom of Poland. However, the case of the cemetery is linked very strongly to the situation of the Poles and their country in the 19th century. This linkage is visible in many of the phenomenon described above.
The cemetery on Okopowa Street is evidence of the changes that occurred during the 19th century and later, such as secularization, acculturation, or integration to Polish culture. It also shows the heterogeneity of the Warsaw Jewish community. Together with some preserved archival documents, the graveyard enables us to understand the nature of this transition, not only in its historical but also in its social and cultural dimensions. Thanks to data on the cemetery, it may be possible to create a sociological portrait of progressive Jews.
Therefore, the Warsaw cemetery is an invaluable source for Jewish history. For many of the people buried there, it may be the only place where their ideological or cultural declarations can be found. The modern sections of the cemetery clearly show the emergence of a new Polish-Jewish (self-)identification. The role of the Polish language in expressing one’s ideological stance is significant. The adoption of Polish meant for many the definition of their own outlook. The fact that they were buried in the Jewish cemetery was a sign that in a religious sense (and probably in some others), they regarded themselves primarily as Jews. This way they remained rooted in two completely different worlds.
As has been proved, the Jewish graveyard in Warsaw is not only a special memorial site, but also an unusual object of research. Therefore, all efforts should be made in order to prevent its further decay. Because of the poor condition of many sections of the cemetery, some precious information may soon be lost forever. Academic research is one of the ways to preserve this information before it disappears and also to pay tribute to this silent and persistent monument to “the absence of Jewish presence” in modern Poland.