Egged, Israel’s largest bus company, owns a bus station in Makow Mazowiecki, Poland that was built over a Jewish cemetery, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
And the company does not take responsibility for the crumbling memorial to the Jewish community, located on the bus station’s edge, in the town 77 km. north of Warsaw.
The date on which the old Jewish cemetery of Makow Mazowiecki was established is unknown, but the first known mention of it dates back to 1781, according to the Virtual Shtetl website operated by the Museum of the History of Polish Jews – Polin. It was in use until 1870, when a new cemetery was built.
During World War II, the Germans destroyed the cemetery; in subsequent years, tombstones from the cemetery were used to build sidewalks in the area and a bus station was built there during the communist era.
In 1987, local activists and descendants of Makow Mazowiecki’s Jews built a memorial out of tombstones salvaged in the area. The oldest tombstone in the memorial is from 1890.
One descendant, Alan Abbey of Jerusalem, visited the site in recent years, and found “the badly deteriorated and quite depressing, relatively unmarked monument to the town’s Jews on the edge of the local, open-air bus depot, which is sort of a small ziggurat of broken gravestones glued together,” he told the Post, adding that his guide said that “the town really wanted to fix up the markers, but it didn’t have the money, and it had received no help from the bus company.”
In 2016, Abbey contacted Egged, saying that “for an Israeli company to have this sad and embarrassing monument is a terrible thing.”
The bus company responded at the time that “the law prevents Egged from dealing with operative matters connected to its subsidiaries.”
More than two years later, Egged further distanced itself from the site it owns through its Polish subsidiary Mobilis, which purchased the bus station in 2010. Read more at JPost
Egged, Israel’s largest bus company, owns a bus station in Makow Mazowiecki, Poland that was built over a Jewish cemetery, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
And the company does not take responsibility for the crumbling memorial to the Jewish community, located on the bus station’s edge, in the town 77 km. north of Warsaw.
The date on which the old Jewish cemetery of Makow Mazowiecki was established is unknown, but the first known mention of it dates back to 1781, according to the Virtual Shtetl website operated by the Museum of the History of Polish Jews – Polin. It was in use until 1870, when a new cemetery was built.
During World War II, the Germans destroyed the cemetery; in subsequent years, tombstones from the cemetery were used to build sidewalks in the area and a bus station was built there during the communist era.
In 1987, local activists and descendants of Makow Mazowiecki’s Jews built a memorial out of tombstones salvaged in the area. The oldest tombstone in the memorial is from 1890.
One descendant, Alan Abbey of Jerusalem, visited the site in recent years, and found “the badly deteriorated and quite depressing, relatively unmarked monument to the town’s Jews on the edge of the local, open-air bus depot, which is sort of a small ziggurat of broken gravestones glued together,” he told the Post, adding that his guide said that “the town really wanted to fix up the markers, but it didn’t have the money, and it had received no help from the bus company.”
In 2016, Abbey contacted Egged, saying that “for an Israeli company to have this sad and embarrassing monument is a terrible thing.”
The bus company responded at the time that “the law prevents Egged from dealing with operative matters connected to its subsidiaries.”
More than two years later, Egged further distanced itself from the site it owns through its Polish subsidiary Mobilis, which purchased the bus station in 2010. Read more at JPost
