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 17.1 cm x 12.8 cm format. The photograph is from the collection of the monument documentation office (Biuro Dokumentacji Zabytków) in Lublin (1971–1991), negative number 17016, the archive of which was taken over by the State Service for the Protection of Monuments. The photograph presents over 23 matzevot in the form of sandstone rectangular stelae. Most are preserved undamaged, some of them are slightly tilted. These are rectangular, segmental arch and semicircular tombstones. On some of the gravestones, there are decorations above Hebrew inscriptions. Quite a number of them are polychromed. The photo was taken from the eastern side, as the matzevot are placed on the Jewish cemetery in a way that the inscriptions face east - towards Jerusalem. In the background, there are trees and dense bushes growing over the area. The Jewish cemetery in Szczebrzeszyn was a burial place from the first half of the 16th century until the Holocaust.