After a prolonged debate, the chevra kaddisha acquiesced to the chassidim. But due to the lack of space in the old cemetery, they had to bury the Rebbe in the taharah room. That room effectively became an ohel that marked the spot of the tzaddik’s burial place. Years later, the taharah room also became the burial place of the Rebbe’s son and his grandson (the latter died as a child).

“In the Modzhitzer court, countless stories have been told over the years about the yeshuos that were effected at the kever of the Rebbe of Kuzmir,” Rav Shlomo Hersh says. “Immediately after he passed away, the kever became a place of pilgrimage for Polish Jews from many communities. The tombstone that was built at the grave was exceptionally ornate, and even the local non-Jews used to come see it. It became customary for chassanim to visit the kever on their wedding days and many Jews in need of salvation would come to daven there. There are many incredible stories about the miraculous salvations that occurred for people who davened at the kever.”

The Second World War put an end to that. In 1939, the German Wehrmacht conquered Poland within a matter of weeks, and the approximately 3,000 Jews of Kuzmir — about half the town’s population — were imprisoned in a ghetto.

Half a year after the ghetto was established, the Nazis went about destroying the old cemetery of Kuzmir. In recently discovered pictures, the Nazis can be seen overseeing Jews from the town being forced to destroy their ancestors’ gravestones and to carry the stones into one of the main streets of the city, where the shattered stones from the ancient cemetery were used in the construction of a new road. The cemetery itself was covered over with dirt. Over the following two years, the Jews were gradually deported to death camps, primarily to Sobibor. By the middle of 1942, the city was completely empty of Jews.

“For many years, it was widely believed that there was only one cemetery in the town, what we now call the ‘new cemetery,’” Rav Shlomo Hersh tells Mishpacha. “We didn’t actually know where the Rebbe of Kuzmir had been buried, and the local government, of course, did not bother to inform us that there was another, older cemetery in the area.”

Crumbling Proof

The breakthrough came in 2013, when a group of Modzhitzer chassidim visited the town. “We walked through the streets with mixed feelings,” Rav Shlomo Hersh relates. “We were sure that the Rebbe had been buried in the town, but no one knew exactly where his tziyun was located. And then, on a tour led by Rav Aryeh Handler, we discovered the site of the old cemetery. It was now a soccer field, the grass completely covering the faintest trace of its true identity.”

The revelation came on a Friday, and that entire Shabbos, Rav Shlomo Hersh could think of little else.

“On Motzaei Shabbos, I returned to the area along with several other chassidim, and we began searching for signs of the cemetery. We realized it must have been directly beneath the soccer field.”

Since that dark night on the soccer field, Rav Shlomo Tzvi has devoted his time, energy, and resources to right a historical wrong.

Today’s Kuzmir — or Kazimierz Dolny — is a picturesque town with a distinctly upper-class feel located on the banks of the Vistula River, in the Lublin district of eastern Poland. Rav Shlomo Hersh began circulating through the town, trying to locate people who could provide information about the old cemetery. Few of the locals, however, agreed to cooperate with the Rebbe’s son.

“One of the residents of the town, a man named Thomas, agreed to help me,” he relates. “After he spent a few days trying to locate information, he brought me an archaeological file and said that he could not do any more than that.”

That file turned out to be the key to unearthing the truth. In 2007, the school adjacent to the athletic field had applied for a permit to expand its building. Polish law requires any construction to be approved by an archaeologist, and the school hired a Polish archaeologist named Dr. Edmund Mitrus, who discovered the remnants of the cemetery beneath the playing field next to the school.

“The archaeologist wrote in his report that he had discovered the foundations of the ohel that had marked the tziyun of the Rebbe of Kuzmir, as well as the entrance to the kever. The report also reveals that he discovered bones and other human remains beneath the expanse of dirt near the school.”

This report, along with two others written by Dr. Mitrus over the following years, confirmed beyond a doubt that a Jewish cemetery existed beneath the soccer field and that it was the location of the tziyun of the Rebbe of Kuzmir, along with the taharah room that had become his ohel. The archaeologist related that he had stopped digging whenever he encountered human remains that were already crumbling, in order to avoid disrespect to the Jewish deceased. His report adds that he discovered earthenware shards in the vicinity of the graves, and that the chassidim believed that they had been placed there in keeping with an ancient Jewish custom to bury earthenware vessels near the deceased.

The report should have created a sensation — but somehow it didn’t deter the town from turning the land into a soccer field.

But that didn’t close the story for Rav Shlomo Hersh. He started making regular visits to Poland. “I met with the mayor, who was very polite and courteous,” he relates. “He told me that he was willing to help, and he accompanied us on a tour of the site.” But the words weren’t followed by any meaningful action.

Every step was planned with the guidance of the Modzhitzer Rebbe. “We saw how important this was to him,” Rav Shlomo Hersh says. “Time after time, the Rebbe encouraged our activities and told us how important our efforts were. He repeatedly called upon anyone who was capable of assisting us to become a partner in the important endeavor of reclaiming the cemetery and rebuilding an ohel at the gravesite of the Rebbe of Kuzmir.”

While Rav Shlomo Hersh kept up his diplomatic efforts, he also brought in an expert who was able to use ground-penetrating radar to determine the exact location of the grave. The technology determined that the Rebbe’s burial place is, in fact, in the middle of the soccer field. Rav Shlomo Hersh decided not to wait any longer, and he gathered a group of chassidim in the middle of the field, spread a paroches on the exact spot of the Rebbe’s burial place, and began to daven.

The phenomenon became the talk of the town. Delegations of chassidim began visiting the site, where they’d pray fervently, although some of the local Poles tried to prevent them from entering the sports field. Others just stared in confusion.

In advance of the Modzhitzer Rebbe’s visit on the most recent yahrtzeit, Rav Shlomo Hersh called upon high-ranking Israeli diplomats to secure an official permit for them to enter the field.

“During the course of that trip, the Rebbe infused us with the fortitude to continue pursuing our efforts,” he relates. “Every time it seemed that we were about to come up with a solution, the local government managed to block us. But the Rebbe kept encouraging us to continue and not to give up. He assured us that we would ultimately prevail.”

Inhuman and Illegal

In his battle for the final respect due to Rav Yechezkel of Kuzmir, Rav Shlomo Hersh has found a stalwart ally. His name is Meir Bulka, an Israeli former high-tech expert who has become a champion of Jewish remains in Poland. Bulka’s passion was sparked three years ago, on his first trip to Poland.

“My grandfather was a Gerrer chassid who lived in Ostrowiec,” says Bulka, 51, who lives in the Shomron community of Shaarei Tikvah. “My father was also born in that city. When my wife — a school principal — took a group of students on a visit to Poland, I decided to join.

“I hired a local guide who took me to the Jewish cemetery. The gravestones in the cemetery had obviously been uprooted at some point, and I was surprised that there were only 60 or 70 gravestones altogether. When I asked my Polish guide what had happened to the thousands of stones that should have been there, he couldn’t answer me. One of the older residents of the city told me to look in the local Christian cemetery. ‘You’ll find your answer there,’ he said.

“When we arrived at the Christian cemetery, we discovered that it was surrounded by a wall. That wall was fashioned entirely out of the Jewish gravestones. When I saw the Jewish names written in Hebrew letters on the stones, I was appalled.”

Meir Bulka took quick action; he arranged to meet with the local mayor.

“I told the mayor that the stones were the private property of Jewish families who had buried their loved ones in the Jewish cemetery. ‘What you have done,’ I told him, ‘is illegal, immoral, and inhumane.’ I demanded that the wall be dismantled and the gravestones returned to me.

“In a response that I would encounter again in the future, the mayor was very nice and very sympathetic, but ultimately stonewalled me. Several months later, I received a letter in which he informed me that dismantling the wall and transferring the gravestones would cost half a million zlotys — about $125,000.”

Bulka was shocked. “Not only do you take my people’s gravestones and use them for disrespectful purpose, you expect me to build you a new wall?” he asked. “There’s no reason for us to fund the construction of a wall for a Christian cemetery.”

Bulka did not give up. He launched an organization called J-nerations, with the stated purpose of recovering the heritage of European Jewry. The organization utilizes the services of attorneys, researchers, historians, and people who simply believe in justice and will do everything possible to see to it that it is achieved.

Last year on Erev Tishah B’Av, Bulka visited the grave of Rav Elimelech of Lizhensk. There, at the tzaddik’s burial site, he davened for success in his daunting battle against the Polish bureaucracy. “I felt as if I was recharging myself from a spiritual generator,” he says. “The next day, I filed a lawsuit against the town, the mayor, and the state of Poland for the theft of the gravestones and the disrespect to the deceased.”

Half a year later, this past Purim day, a Polish court ruled that the town of Ostrowiec and the Polish government had violated the law, and it ordered them to immediately dismantle the wall and to return the gravestones to the possession of the Jews. “The people of Ostrowiec had never seen anyone as crazy as I was then,” he says. “I was dancing in the halls of the court and singing Purim songs.”

The ensuing publicity made Bulka an address for Jews with similar cases, and it wasn’t long before a Modzhitzer chassid enlisted his help in the ongoing cemetery saga in Kazimierz Dolny.

Every Last Grave

Bulka prepared for his new case thoroughly: first, with a personal brachah from the Modzhitzer Rebbe, and next, with exhaustive historical and archaeological research. He documented the surfacing of tombstones, bones, and skeletons on the school grounds and in nearby areas. One local woman even showed him a tombstone and pieces of bones in her yard.

“When I finally had all the information,” he says, “I contacted the municipality in Kazimierz Dolny and asked to interview the mayor and take his picture for an article meant to foster Israeli tourism.”

The mayor was not prepared for Bulka’s true agenda. Within minutes, the conversation took a sharp turn. “I told him that I had met several chassidish Jews in the town, and they had told me that the local government had refused to return the Jewish cemetery to the Jews,” Bulka recalls. “I told him that I, as a Jew, needed to understand what was happening, and even though it was very distressing to change the objective of our meeting, I would appreciate it if he would explain the situation.

“The mayor tried to evade the question. He said that the issue was being taken care of. I said, ‘Sir, I have a surprise for you.’ I took out the file I had brought, with the documents detailing all of the chassidim’s prior interactions with the local government. He was shocked. I told him that I was prepared to go to the police and to prove that he, the mayor, was guilty of violating the law. ‘If you do not cooperate with me,’ I said, ‘you will no longer be the mayor here. Your job is to find an immediate solution for the fact that you have stolen the private property of the Jews who lived here, and that you have blatantly defiled the resting places of deceased Jews.’ ”

The stunned mayor asked Bulka to meet with the members of the local government. In that meeting, which took place three weeks ago, Bulka demanded an immediate resolution to the situation. He also presented another demand, based on new findings that he had discovered.

“The part of the school building adjacent to the athletic field has also been built on the cemetery grounds,” he says. “I informed the members of the local government that if they don’t come up with an immediate solution, I will demand that the school not be permitted to open for the new year. I have evidence that shows that part of the building was actually constructed on Jewish graves.”

Before his meeting, Bulka asked the Modzhitzer Rebbe for direction as to how he should handle the latest findings. “I asked if I should limit my efforts to the kever of the Rebbe of Kuzmir, or fight for the entire site. The Rebbe answered unequivocally: ‘A Jew is a Jew, and we must do everything possible to redeem every Jew’s grave. We do not intend to give up on any of them.’ ”

The town officials, however, refused to offer an immediate solution. Bulka gave them an ultimatum: If they did not respond with a solution within 24 hours, he would appeal to the law enforcement authorities. One day later, criminal complaints were filed.

The town officials countered that they were open to further discussion. “We have proven that we are willing to talk and to find the best possible solution,” they claimed just last week. They also decried Bulka’s tactics, arguing that “the solutions will be reached only through dialogue.”

Bulka smiles bitterly at the report of their response. “For the past four years, the chassidim have been hearing about their ‘interest in dialogue.’ The local officials will do everything possible to prevent progress of any sort. We will go to the relevant government offices and to their courts, and we will force them to return the cemetery to us. My goal is clear: By the next yahrtzeit of the Rebbe of Kuzmir — the 17th of Shevat, 5779 — all of us, along with tens of thousands of chassidim, will be davening at his ohel — even if it’s an ohel made of cardboard.”

Rav Shlomo Hersh puts it all in perspective. Back when the local authorities still hoped the story would just die down, they erected a monument outside the soccer field. The monument, which notes that a Jewish cemetery once existed at the site, seemed the perfect way to placate the Jewish visitors.

“But they didn’t realize who they were dealing with,” Rav Shlomo Hersh says. “They didn’t understand that a memorial of stone can never silence the Jewish heart.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 718)