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ABOUT ZBARAZH | JEWISH STONES UA
A brief description of the Jewish community and the "new" Jewish cemetery of Zbarazh, Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine, together with information about the Jewish headstone documentation project which created this database. Relevant information sources are at the end of this page.
About the Zbarazh Jewish Community

A panoramic photograph of Zbarazh by Friedrich Albin from the 1890s, showing prominent religious community buildings including the large "Great" Synagogue (circled) in the background. Source: Polona.

Brief histories of the Zbarazh Jewish community are available in the 1983 Zbarazh Memorial Book (Sefer Zbaraz) and in texts and online publications researched by Ukrainian historians Oleh Mandryk, Tetiana Fedoriv, and others, working from scarce and conflicting available records. The settlement of Zbarazh (Zbaraż in Polish) is first mentioned in 1214; a memorial sign is erected on the ruins of the old fortress in Staryi Zbarazh. It is plausible that Jews settled in the city as early as the first century of settlement, but there are no sources to confirm this fact. It is not known when the community was formally established with rights to land and buildings.

Through the 18th and 19th centuries, under Polish and then Austrian rule, the rabbis of Zbarazh were renowned for their teaching and their writings throughout the region. However, in parallel in the 19th century, Zbarazh was also one of the centers for prominent supporters of Haskalah, known as the intellectual movement of the Jewish Enlightenment. The Sefer Zbaraz notes that among the Maskilim in Zbarazh were "representatives of the free professions: lawyers, physicians, engineers, veterinarians, pharmacists, high government and town officials, officials in various local institutions, and even a Jewish judge".


An Austrian cadastral map drawn from an 1830 land survey of Zbarazh showing the urban core of the city with the market square at center left and the historic castle at lower right. Jewish community features include the Great Synagogue west of the square (circled in red) and the original ("old") cemetery north of the city center (circled in blue). Source: DATO and Gesher Galicia.


An undated class photo of the Chinuch Jewish school in Zbarazh. Source: Sefer Zbarazh, p.36.
Although the early history of the city's Jewish community remains unknown, by the late 19th century the Jewish population of Zbarazh was large: 3768 of 8062 total residents (47%) in 1880, though dropping to 2896 of 8310 total (35%) in 1900, according to Austrian censuses. After WWI, in a 1921 census under the Second Polish Republic, the Jewish population remained stable despite the effects of the war, with 2982 Jews in a total of 8409 citizens (35%). Throughout this period, the city's three main ethno-religious groups: Ukrainians labeled (Rusyns), Poles (including Polish Roman Catholics and Ukrainian Greek Catholics), and Jews remained roughly equal in proportion. Limited historical records and surviving buildings indicate that the Zbarazh Jewish community lived throughout the city, though devoutly religious Jews generally lived in the district west of the Market Square (near the Great Synagogue).


The Zionist women's aid association "Help" in Zbarazh. Source: Sefer Zbarazh, p.33.
The Sefer Zbaraz describes the development of social and economic life and the revitalization of the Jewish community in the early 20th century. By 1907 there was a large and influential Chinuch educational institution in the city, which supported afternoon classes (following morning classes in the Polish public schools) for more than 500 Jewish children from families associated with all of the Jewish religious movements, teaching the Hebrew language and a range of other topics. During WWI, the Yehudah Halevi Association also founded a Hebrew school and public libraries, and established a dramatic troupe. Besides the large schools, smaller cheders continued to introduce small children to Jewish language and culture.


An undated photo of the Hashomer Hatzair youth Zionist group in Zbarazh. Source: Sefer Zbarazh, p.30.
To aid in recovery from the destruction of WWI, Jewish community assistance committees were established, as well as mutual assistance unions and charity funds to make small loans; a Jewish bank was created in Zbarazh in 1930. Political activities and a Jewish voting bloc also rose in response to heavy taxes and trade restrictions; despite very limited Jewish representation in local government, a Jew was elected city mayor in 1931. Also between the wars, the Zionist movement took hold in Zbarazh; a branch of the Hashomer Hatzair ("Young Guard") youth organization was established in 1917, and in the following years many other youth and workers' groups were formed (Gordonia, Hashomer Hadati, Akiva, Beitar, Poalei Zion, etc.). in the 1920s some Zbarazh youth made aliyah to British Mandatory Palestine.


zbarazh_synagogue_yad_vashemThe Great Synagogue of Zbarazh after its burning during the German occupation. Source: Yad Vashem, from the family collection of Eliza Pentzer.
The invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939 and the near-simultaneous occupation of eastern Poland (including Zbarazh) by the Soviet Union did not immediately endanger the city's Jewish community, although several thousand Jews from western Poland fled the Germans and settled in and around Zbarazh as refugees. The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos reports that the German occupation of Zbarazh began on 4 July 1941, preceded by several days of anti-Jewish violence including murder and the burning of two synagogues. Later in July the German authorities established a Judenrat, imposed the wearing of armbands marked with the Star of David, and forbade Jews from leaving the city limits; other aggressions and abuses accompanied these restrictions. On 6 September, about 70 Jewish intellectuals were shot to death in the Lubianka Forest east of the city and buried in pits which they had dug for themselves. All healthy Jewish men in the city were forced into slave labor on railroad construction.

Between August and November 1942, local Jews in numbers ranging from a few hundred to a thousand (for a total of about 3000) were gathered in four successive planned Aktions and shot on the spot, deported to Bełżec, or sent to the Janowska Street or sent to the Janowska Street prison camp in Lviv. Beginning in October and then officially on 10 November 1942,

An armband a Jew of Zbarazh was forced to wear during the German occupation.
Source: National Reserve "Castles of Ternopil", photo by Tetiana Fedoriv.
an open but well-guarded and concentrated Jewish ghetto was established on the west side of the city (covering the modern streets of Sholem Aleichem, Sichovykh Striltsiv, and Yakiv Chaika), where starvation and death from diseases prevailed. Beginning in November, Jews from surrounding towns and villages were moved in as well.

In April 1943, more than 1000 Jews from the ghetto were shot in ditches near the Zbarazh train station, on the territory of an oil depot (called "Neftestroy"). On 8 June 1943, the ghetto was liquidated with the killing of several hundred local Jews; ten days later, about 150 Jews who had escaped the liquidation and prior Aktions were captured and killed in the forest, seven kilometers outside the city. Only an estimated 60 Jews survived the war (of the roughly 5000 who had inhabited Zbarazh in July 1941 plus many others moved in before the ghetto liquidation) through their own actions and some with the aid of local gentiles. The Zbarazh native writer Ida Fink, who escaped the ghetto with her sister in the autumn of 1942, surviving with false papers and with the aid of those who cared, described her experiences in short stories (collected as A Scrap of Time) and her award-winning novel The Journey.


Two views of the former Zbarazh Great Synagogue as part of a factory, in 1993 and 2015.
Sources: Center for Jewish Art and Tetiana Fedoriv.
Some relics of prewar Jewish life remain in Zbarazh today. No reliable original sources provide information about the construction of the first synagogue in Zbarazh, or about any synagogues other than the large "Great" Synagogue which still stands near the city center, though before WWII there must have been several to serve the various resident Jewish religious movements and groups as in other cities of Galicia and interwar Poland. The first building was likely wooden; unsourced local lore dates the construction to 1537. Regional histories report that it was damaged during the siege of Zbarazh by Bohdan Khmelnytskyi's forces in 1649, rebuilt, then burned down in 1675 by Turkish troops. New reconstruction of the synagogue was recorded soon after, and further repairs and new construction were noted in 1755, in the late 19th century, and following WWI (again probably due to war damage).

When the first masonry version of the synagogue was built is unknown, perhaps during the era in which substantial Christian churches and monasteries were constructed (in the 17th and especially the 18th centuries); the synagogue was already a significant masonry building by the time of the 1830 Austrian land survey of Zbarazh, as indicated by the pink color of its footprint on the subsequent cadastral map. During WWII the synagogue building was set on fire almost immediately upon the entry of the German occupation forces. After the war, the building was structurally repaired and converted to a warehouse; the structure was incorporated into the building complex of a local food factory. Currently, the synagogue building is part of a local distillery, with no public access.


The former Zbarazh kahal office building (at left) in 2017. Source: Tetiana
A few other former Jewish buildings survive today in Zbarazh, several of which are documented by historian Tetiana Fedoriv. Perhaps first among those is the office of the prewar kahal (kehilla), the administration organization for the secular and religious Jewish community, situated on the market square and today in use as a residence. Other buildings mentioned in Fedoriv's' research and publications include: Jakub Glassman's house and photo studio (rebuilt after the war), a bathhouse (now shops and a warehouse), Reichenbaum's laundry (now in ruins), Sender's bakery (now in ruins), as well as the residential buildings of several prominent citizens, which now house the city's architectural and planning office (Salo Shmayuk's house), a residential apartment building (Weinzaft's house), and the Speiser mansion, which now houses the Museum of the Russian-Ukrainian War.

About the Zbarazh Jewish Cemeteries


The kindergarten grounds which now occupy the space of the Zbarazh old Jewish cemetery, in 2017.
Source: RJH.
Two Jewish cemeteries had been established in Zbarazh before WWII. It is not known when the first (or "old") cemetery was established north of the Zbarazh city center, at GPS 49.6698 25.7748, though some unsourced histories give a founding year of 1510. As in other towns and cities of the region, the cemetery was almost certainly in service when the first synagogue was built in the 16th or 17th century. The earliest documentary mention of the “old” Jewish cemetery in Zbarazh dates to 1744. The cemetery appears on a cadastral map drawn from an 1830 Austrian land survey, marked with the typical triangle symbols representing matzevot and colored green to indicate a grass landscape. At more than 2 hectares of area, the cemetery was large, and by the end of the 19th century or earlier it was surrounded by a high plastered masonry wall with an arched entrance from the road. Despite its size the cemetery was crowded by the beginning of the 20th century and closed to new burials in 1915. The site was known as "okopisko" (trench) or "kirkut" to locals, common neutral Polish terms for non-Christian burial sites.

During the German occupation of WWII, in 1942 nearly all of the matzevot were broken and removed from the cemetery to serve as road foundation fill under the main road from Zbarazh to the village of Chernykhivtsi. After the war, children played among the few remaining matzevot in the cemetery, until the remainder were removed by Soviet authorities to build animal sheds at the local collective farm. The cemetery was leveled in the 1960s; today a kindergarten (which opened in 1968) and a household goods factory are on the site, with no visible trace of the cemetery's original and eternal purpose.


Two photos of the Zbarazh old Jewish cemetery taken in the winter of 1916 (during WWI). Source: August Thiry via JewishGen KehilaLinks Zbaraż.


The Austrian cadastral map drawn from an 1830 land survey, again showing the first (or "old") Jewish cemetery in Zbarazh (circled in blue), plus the site of the future second (or "new") Jewish cemetery
(circled in violet). Source: DATO and Gesher Galicia.
Based on the surviving headstones, local historians date the second or “new” Jewish cemetery to 1905. According to the memories of Zbarazh's old-timers, the last burial in the cemetery took place in 1966 or 1967. However, this has not been confirmed, and no headstone with this date has been found. The latest epitaph on the surviving headstones is dated 1947.

The “new” Jewish cemetery is located somewhat further from the city center than the old cemetery was. However, it is located on the same central street, Hrushevskoho Street, where the old and new Christian cemeteries of Zbarazh are also located, at GPS 49.6742 25.7633. The 1830 land survey of course does not show the new cemetery, but the plot of agricultural land from which the cemetery was created is visible on the cadastral map, as shown here in an excerpt which identifies both Jewish cemetery locations in Zbarazh.


An excerpt from a 1939 Polish military topographical map showing the old Jewish cemetery in Zbarazh (circled in blue) and the new Jewish cemetery then in service (circled in violet). Source: WIG Map Archive.
Both Jewish cemeteries in Zbarazh appear on a 1939 Polish military (Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny, WIG) topographical map at 1:25,000 scale, drawn from a 1938 survey. In WIG map symbols, a Christian cemetery is indicated with a field of crosses, and a Jewish cemetery is indicated with a field of Ts, perhaps to suggest the flat or rounded top of most matzevot.

The new Jewish cemetery in Zbarazh is approximately 1.5 hectares in area. The cemetery was only partially destroyed during the German occupation and partially dismantled during the later Soviet period. Due to the absence of a Jewish community in the town, the cemetery grounds were neglected and cluttered until after the turn of the millennium.


The gate and part of the fence installed by ESJF at the Zbarazh new Jewish cemetery, seen in 2020.
Source: RJH.
Civic and heritage activist attention to the cemetery increased significantly in the mid-2010s. In 2014, at the initiative of the mayor of Zbarazh, Roman Polikrovsky, vegetation clearing and maintenance work was organized and carried out, making the site accessible to visitors and enabling photographic documentation. In late 2018, ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative installed a perimeter fence of stone and metal to mark the site boundaries and to identify its purpose, and in 2022 they installed a bilingual Ukrainian/English information sign to provide historical and cultural context for the cemetery and the Jewish community it served. Since 2019, as part of the ESJF education program and with the collaboration of historian Tetiana Fedoriv, the site has also served as a training ground for Ukrainian educators, civil society activists, and heritage preservationists on the use of historic Jewish cemeteries for cross-cultural understanding and appreciation.


A few of the ornate carved matzevot in the Zbarazh new Jewish cemetery, seen in 2017. Source: RJH.
Research on site shows that the cemetery is informally divided into two sections, an older and a newer one. The earlier and smaller section includes graves dating from the Habsburg era, i.e. from 1906 to sometime after the end of WWI; epitaphs on those matzevot are primarily in Hebrew but some include German-language texts as well. Burials in the larger and later section date from the Polish interwar era (and a few through the end of WWII), with epitaphs again in Hebrew but many also with brief Polish-language texts. No cemetery records have yet been found, but as of 2019 more than 175 carved limestone and sandstone headstones have been recorded on the site, mostly upright in place and in good condition. In addition to traditional laudatory epitaphs, many of the headstones feature ornate figurative carving with a wide range of Jewish symbols, both classic and unusual, including some elaborate vegetative designs.


A small sample of the headstones standing in the Zbarazh new Jewish cemetery seen at twilight in 2020. Source: RJH.
About the Zbarazh Jewish Headstone Documentation Project

Tetiana Fedoriv guiding a school class in the Zbarazh new Jewish cemetery. Source: ESJF.
All headstone photographs in the database were taken by Tetiana Fedoriv between 2017 and 2024; she also transcribed the Hebrew, German, and Polish epitaphs on every stone, and translated all of the carved texts into Ukrainian as well (English translations for the database were provided by Jay Osborn, Marla Raucher Osborn, and others). Tetiana Fedoriv is a local historian from Zbarazh, a teacher of history and law, and a graduate of Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University. She also completed the one-year Polish Government Scholarship Program for Young Scholars at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and the International Interdisciplinary Certificate Program in Jewish Studies. She currently works in the Department of Tourism and Cultural Heritage Protection at the Department of Economics and Investment of the Zbarazh City Council. In addition to cataloguing images and epitaphs of the entire new Jewish cemetery in Zbarazh for publication with historical and cultural context in her book Essays on the History of the Jews of Zbarazh: the “New” Jewish Cemetery in the City, Fedoriv has also interpreted and analyzed the data revealed in the epitaphs to form a larger and interconnected picture of the life of Zbarazh Jewish community of Zbarazh in the early 20th century.


A screenshot of the interactive memory map of the Zbarazh new Jewish cemetery.
Source: Foundation for Jewish Heritage.
In a "Deep Dive" project collaboration with the Foundation for Jewish Heritage and its partner institutions ESJF and Centropa, Fedoriv provided images and researched biographies of more than 20 people buried in the Zbarazh new Jewish cemetery for presentation on an interactive web map of the cemetery, as a model concept for exploring Jewish cemeteries as visitor sites. In addition to stories about individuals, the information can be explored geographically, thematically, and through family connections.


Tetiana Fedoriv presenting her recent book series at the Zbarazh municipal library. Source: Iryna Nebesna.
While researching the Jewish past of Zbarazh, Fedoriv worked through all available metrical records (birth, marriage, and death) of the Jewish community of Zbarazh, which are now stored in the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw (AGAD), organizing and publishing them in a four-volume series in 2023 and 2024. Working from the epitaphs in the new Jewish cemetery, the metrical records, historical newspaper articles, the Sefer Zbaraz and other memoirs, Yad Vashem archives, oral histories and local history materials, as well as a number of other sources, Fedoriv has attempted to analyze and interpret the history of the Zbarazh Jewish community for numerous and varied print articles and web articles, as well as for lectures and presentations in local and international forums.

References/Sources