News

The Podlasie Monument Conservationist has been dismissed after the digging works conducted at the Jewish Cemetery in Siemiatycze. 'Kurier Poranny' newspaper wrote: "Kirkut burried the conservationist". Andrzej Nowakowski was a conservationist for the Białystok district in 2006-2015. Then, in March 2016 he retook this possition at the request of the province governor Bohdan Paszkowski. He lost it again on 14 December 2017. As the Gazeta Wyborcza's reporters found out, his dismissal was conected to the recent construction works at the Jewish cemetery in Siemiatycze during which many graves and tombs have been devastated and the soil containing the bones has been taken out. "Andrzej Nowakowski has been dismissed from his possition of the Monument Conservationist of Podlasie Province because he didn't cary out his responsibilities of protecting the Jewish Cemetery in Siemiatycze - the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage has informed. Andrzej Nowakowski, talking on the phone with Tomasz Mikulicz (Gazeta Wyborcza reporter) said that he's been given the notice and refused further comments. Andrzej Nowakowski's activity has been already causing negative reactions of historians and the monuments defenders. He has been criticised for his lack of supervision over the wooden orthodox churches and St. Roch's Church renovation works. Jewish Cemetery in Siemiatycze is on the historical monuments list but the list doesn't cover the west section of the cemetery where after 1946 Polish Motorcycle Assosiation and later a market were built. At this exact site, at the beginning of December 2017 construction works were run. The General Monuments Conservationist, Magdalena Gawin, intervened last year when the building of old Talmudic School in Konin was took apart.

Source: Jewish.pl, photos "Wirtualny sztetl".(db)