The New Dynów Jewish

Cemetery Endowment

Dear Family,

The New Jewish Cemetery on Karolowka Street in Dynów is our family’s singular connection to our ancestors who were murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazis.

We have discussed and written about their tragic deaths. It happened on Rosh Hashanah in 1939. Dynów was attacked by Nazi soldiers less than two weeks after the start of the war on September 1, 1939. They invaded the town and rounded up the Jews, shot about 400 of them into two mass graves, burned Jews alive in the synagogue, and drove many of them to flee across the San River for safety, with many drowning.

The Neger/Spinrad families, a backbone of Jewish life in Dynów, lost 39 family members that day, including twin infants who were shot with their mother while she held them in her arms.

The cemetery is a mass grave. We must perpetually respect that gravesite.

This is to invite you to participate actively in the sacred duty to honor and memorialize our lost ancestors and family whose remains lie in the “New” Jewish Cemetery in Dynów, Poland.

Background of this project:

In 2016, I organized a restoration of the New Jewish Cemetery in Dynów, known as the Karolówka Cemetery. Several of you generously contributed to a fund that paid for a new fence and plaque that were constructed. The project was completed in July 2017. We thank you again for those contributions. Some of you have been at the site.

In 2017, I arranged for the fabrication of individual plaques with the known names of each of our family members who were murdered on that day. These plaques cannot replace the lost souls or their known places of burial, but they are an effort to make sure their names are not erased, as the Nazis tried to do. The plaques are installed on the outer wall of the Ohel of the Dynower rebbes in the Old Cemetery.

For the funding of these projects to this point, we thank Menashe and Miri Neger, Robert and Lori Gamiel, Francine Brooks and Linda Weaver, Toby Talbot, Alan Levin, Elsie Levin, Ellen Brooks Tolle, Roslyn and Eugene Gamiel, Carol Katzman, Eliot Levin, Jeanette Levin, Ronda Neger, Fay Neger, and The Dynów Benevolent Society of New York.

Ms. Wiesława Marszałek, whose property is adjacent to the cemetery, has voluntarily taken on the responsibility of hiring local workers to clean the cemetery with the funds collected thus far. Ms. Marszałek’s grandfather was one of the workers who reinterred the remains of about 200 bodies, taking them from the mass grave that the Nazis had forced them to dig before they were shot, and respectfully burying them in the New Cemetery.

THE PLAN FOR THE FUTURE AND FOR PERPETUAL CARE

At this point, we have established an endowment named The New Dynów Jewish Cemetery Endowment that will provide perpetual care for the cemetery. This will ensure that the cemetery is cleaned yearly—removing weeds, dead branches, and trees—and that the drainage system is maintained.

We have chosen to work with the Jewish Foundation of Greater New Haven, an organization that has successfully set up endowments for other families who have loved ones buried in Jewish cemeteries in Poland.

The Jewish Foundation of Greater New Haven works in partnership with Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland and The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, which operates in-country.

This partnership will ensure that a dignified final resting place for our ancestors will remain a reality long after we are gone.

The attached photos show the construction that was completed in the spring of 2017, the dedication of the new plaque and fence in July 2017, and our last visit to the site in January 2025 during the International Holocaust Remembrance event in Podkarpackie.

OUR GOALS

The annual cost of maintaining the cemetery is about $3,000. We hope to raise that amount and more each year, with any overage going toward the endowment for long-term care.

In order to have an endowment sufficient to provide perpetual care, we estimate that a fund of $200,000 will be needed. We expect the endowment amount to be built up gradually with annual contributions from all interested and able family members.

We appreciate any contribution that you can make toward this goal. All donations are tax-deductible. The short-term goal is to have funds to pay for the annual upkeep. The longer-term goal is to have an endowment funded so that this cemetery will be cared for respectfully in perpetuity.

With love and thanks,
Nina Talbot & Mark Rand