Objects

A black and white photograph of a matzeva in a Jewish cemetery in Szczebrzeszyn (Zamość county). The photo was taken by Mieczysław Kurzątkowski (1932–2000) in 1959, who worked as a senior conservator of monuments at that time; he became a provincial conservator of monuments later on, and a director of the Lublin Open Air Village Museum in the years 1986–1998. The print is made on glossy paper in a 12.5 cm x 17.3 cm format. The photograph is from the collection of the monument documentation office (Biuro Dokumentacji Zabytków) in Lublin (1971–1991), negative number 17020, the archive of which was taken over by the State Service for the Protection of Monuments. The photo presents matzevot in the form of rectangular sandstone stelae. Three of them are in the foreground. On the tallest one, there is a decoration in the form of a candlestick, indicating that it is a woman's gravestone. There is a simple architectural decoration on the remaining two. Immediately behind them, there is a preserved base of another gravestone and similar three matzevot in the distance. Trees and bushes covering the cemetery area are also visible. The Jewish cemetery in Szczebrzeszyn was a burial place from the first half of the 16th century until the Holocaust.