The Antechamber of Mystery

As the dust and confusion of World War II and the early postwar years settled, deserted and dilapidated Jewish burial grounds and houses of prayer began to acquire a unique presence amid the physical and mental townscapes of formerly “Jewish towns.” Desired property, victims of exploitation, and vectors of past violence, these sites gradually entered the local folklore, as is often recalled by members of the postwar generations, who inherited a changed reality devoid of Jewish presence. Growing up in postwar, provincial Biłgoraj, Piotr T. Kwiatkowski (b. 1957) was exposed to almost no physical evidence of his town’s centuries-old Jewish