Reclaiming the Past

Students help restore a pre-WWII Jewish cemetery in Poland
Students in a cemetery work together to lift a fallen tombstone
During their three-week internship with the Bialystok Cemetery Restoration Project, Suffolk students helped restore more than 1,000 gravesites. 

Glimpses of sacred Hebrew writing on paving stones along the streets of Bialystok, Poland, hint at a tragedy long buried. This summer, Suffolk students traveled halfway around the world to help restore the historic Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery—and right a nearly century-old wrong. 

Once used by one of the largest Jewish communities in Poland, Bagnowka was destroyed during WWII and in the Communist occupation that followed. Grave markers were broken and buried, with some even repurposed as steps and pavers, says Suffolk’s History, Language & Global Culture Department Chair Barbara Abrams. 

When Abrams first heard about efforts to restore the cemetery, she immediately thought the project could be a valuable opportunity for her students to gain hands-on history experience. 

“It is so important to be able to touch objects that hold history and tell a story,” says Abrams, whose research regularly takes her deep into literary and material archives. So she set to work raising money—primarily thanks to generous donations from Boston-area funeral homes—and sent two students to work with the Bialystok Cemetery Restoration Project in 2023. This year, donations and Suffolk student travel funds allowed three students to participate in a summer internship with the group. 

Following a summer course on WWII that provided valuable context, College of Arts & Sciences students Amaya Anderson, Madison Hardy, and Kate Reynolds spent three weeks unearthing and cataloging pre-war graves in Bagnowka. Abrams and her husband, Rabbi David Kudan, also joined them for part of their trip.

At first, Anderson, a politics, philosophy, and economics major, says she was intimidated by the state of the cemetery. “But as we gathered pieces, washed tombstones, and cleared the land, I began to understand the importance of the work,” she says. During their internship, they helped restore more than 1,000 gravesites. 

 
Barbara Abrams crouches by a grave she is helping to restore in Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery
For Professor Abrams, the trip was also deeply personal, as she followed volunteer work at Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery with a search for her own ancestors’ birth and burial places in nearby towns.
Three students pose with Professor Barbara Abrams and her husband, Rabbi David Kudan, in Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery
Suffolk College of Arts & Sciences students Amaya Anderson, Madison Hardy,  Kate Reynolds, and History, Language & Global Culture Department Chair Barbara Abrams along with Abrams’ husband, Rabbi David Kudan (at left), paused during their work unearthing and cataloging pre-WWII graves in the Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery in Bialystok, Poland.

Reynolds compared her experience at Bagnowka to the Old North Crypt in Boston, where she spent part of the summer working as an educator for her senior honors thesis: “Grave Matters: A Comparative Study on Unique Instances of Burial and Preservation in Anglican and Jewish Faiths.” She wrote of seeing public history in action in Bialystok, where the students learned about the complex relationship between the city and its Jewish community from local guides at historic sites and museums. 

Hardy describes seeing the worst of humanity in the desecration of the sacred site, and the best of it while working alongside volunteers from around the world to put things right.

“There was a beauty that I found while conversing with the other volunteers, people of faiths outside of Judaism [who] came to pay their respects by engaging in this important work. Volunteering on this project was much more than just an internship, it was also a spiritual journey.” 

 

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