The Łódź Jewish Cemetery — the largest in Europe

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The Łódź Jewish Cemetery was founded in 1892 by the Łódź Jewish community when the older cemetery at ul. Wesoła (from 1811) proved too small for a rapidly growing community. Łódź, one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe in the nineteenth century, drew Jewish merchants, workers, craftsmen and entrepreneurs from across the former Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Galicia. On the eve of the First World War the Łódź Jewish community numbered more than 170,000 (one third of the city’s population).

The Bracka cemetery was designed with future scale in mind — 40 hectares, divided into quarters for different social strata: from representative tombs of magnate families along the main avenue to mass fields of the Chevra Kadisha for the poor. Over the following decades more than 180,000 people were buried here — the greatest concentration of Jewish burials in any single cemetery in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The most famous monument is the mausoleum of Israel Poznański (1833–1900), one of the three great Łódź cotton magnates (alongside Karl Scheibler and Ludwig Geyer). Poznański built a textile empire including the factories at ul. Ogrodowa (today Manufaktura), the palace at ul. Ogrodowa 15 and an entire workers’ estate. His cemetery mausoleum, completed in 1905 to a design by Adolf Zeligson, is the largest Jewish tomb in Europe — a monumental art-nouveau chapel with a mosaic dome, marble columns and Byzantine stylistic motifs. The interior was originally covered with gilding and rich stained glass.

Other notable burials include Maximilian Goldfeder, founder of the Łódź Jewish hospital; Rabbi Eliasz Chaim Maizel, Chief Rabbi of Łódź 1873–1912; the Silberstein and Jarociński and other textile dynasty families; and Shmuel Zaynvil Hirszenberg, a painter of the Łódź artistic milieu of the turn of the twentieth century.

The most tragic chapter in the cemetery’s history are the years 1940–1944, when it lay within the boundaries of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto — the second-largest Nazi ghetto in occupied Poland. The Germans used the cemetery for burials of victims of starvation, disease and terror — a special area known as the "Ghetto Field" was set apart, in which approximately 43,000 victims were buried. The field is today the most moving part of the cemetery — thousands of simple graves with numbers instead of names, a portion of them still bearing tablets with hand-written inscriptions.

After the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944 (the deportation of the last 65,000 or so to Auschwitz-Birkenau) the cemetery remained — paradoxically — almost untouched. The Germans did not have time to destroy it before the arrival of the Red Army in January 1945. This makes Bracka the only Jewish cemetery in any Polish city to have survived the Shoah in a condition that today allows the full scale of the pre-war community to be understood.

After the war the cemetery remained in the care of the remnant Łódź Jewish community, later under the administration of the Jewish Religious Community of Łódź. In recent decades systematic conservation has been under way — the Poznański mausoleum was restored in 2006–2010 with funding from the Ministry of Culture, the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage and international donors.

The Bracka cemetery is accessible to visitors through the main gate at ul. Bracka 40. Admission is charged (moderate, 12 PLN per person in 2026). Men and boys from the age of thirteen are required to cover their heads — kippot are available at the gate.

The cemetery is closed on Saturdays (Shabbat) — from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday — and on Jewish holidays. Open: Sunday to Friday 09:00–17:00 in summer, 09:00–16:00 in winter. The best time for a visit is morning (better light, lower footfall).

The tradition of placing stones applies — particularly at the Poznański mausoleum and on the Ghetto Field. Men who are kohanim traditionally do not enter the cemetery.

The cemetery is vast — 40 hectares, about 180,000 surviving matzevot. The main avenues are paved, but reaching the Ghetto Field requires walking several hundred metres along a side path. We recommend comfortable footwear and a visit planned with rest (benches are available).

The Poznański mausoleum may be viewed from outside during cemetery opening hours; the interior is made available by advance arrangement with the community (organised groups).

Photography is permitted with respect for the gravity of the place. On the Ghetto Field we ask for particular restraint — it is a place of burial of specific persons, not a museum exhibit.

Zasady wizyty:

• • Nakrycie głowy: wymagane (mężczyźni, chłopcy 13+)
• • Otwarcie: Sunday–Friday 09:00–17:00 (16:00 winter); closed Saturday (Shabbat) and Jewish holidays
• • Tradycja kładzenia kamyków: tak — symbol pamięci
• • Fotografia: dozwolona z szacunkiem

For families seeking the graves of Łódź forebears, the Jewish Religious Community of Łódź maintains a burial database for the Bracka cemetery. The database is partly accessible online (cmentarzlodz.jewish.org.pl) and currently includes over 80,000 indexed gravestones. Each record contains the location (quarter/row/number) and a translation of the inscription.

For victims of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto the key source is the database of ghetto victims maintained by the Institute of National Remembrance and the State Archive in Łódź. Yad Vashem contains detailed information on Łódź Jewish families murdered during the Shoah.

The Museum of Independence Traditions in Łódź, Radegast Station branch at ul. Stalowa 17 (the former railway station from which transports departed for the camps), conducts research on the deportation lists — useful for families seeking the precise fate of specific persons.

VIP Transfers helps arrange a consultation with the community genealogist before the visit, so that you arrive with the grave location and family context in hand.

The Łódź Jewish Cemetery is at ul. Bracka 40 in the Bałuty district, about 4 km from central Łódź. The Mercedes V-Class draws up directly at the gate — parking is available on the street. From most central hotels (Andel’s, DoubleTree, Vienna House, Hotel Borowiecki) the drive takes 10 to 15 minutes.

Łódź lies about 140 km from Warsaw (1.5–2 hours via the A2 motorway) and about 290 km from Krakow (3–3.5 hours). For guests travelling from Warsaw we offer a full-day "Memory of Łódź" programme: the cemetery, Radegast Station, Manufaktura (Poznański’s former factories, today a cultural centre) and the Poznański Palace (Museum of the City of Łódź).

A standard visit to the cemetery lasts two to three hours. We recommend including the Ghetto Field and the Poznański mausoleum in the programme — two contrasting symbols of Łódź Jewish history. Hotel pickup from Warsaw or Krakow and returns are included in the full-day service.