Alternate names: Goniądz [Pol], Goniondzh [Yid], Gonyendz [Rus], Gonyadz, Gonyandz, Gonyondz, Gonyondzh, Goniondz, Russian: Гонёндз. גאניאנדז- Yiddish. 53°29' N, 22°45' E, 17 miles SE of Grajewo, 29 miles NW of Białystok, 46 miles WSW of Grodno. 1900 Jewish population: 2,056.
Yizkors: Sefer yizkor Goniadz (Tel Aviv, 1960) and Zekher le-hayeha ve-hurbanah shel k.k. Goniadz (Ramat Gan, 1965). town (pop. 1,915) in Mońki powiat in Podlaskie Voivodeship in NE Poland. 80% of the town was destroyed in WWII. [May 2009]
CEMETERY:
ShtetLink photos, description, and directions: "The cemetery rapidly overgrows with vegetation, but is otherwise free of threats. Six grotto-style matzevoth are still in situ; three more are broken; a few bases remain (Images 6-7). Most inscriptions are legible. Boulders mark the northern and southern bases. Caution: Stinging nettles abound in this area." satellite photo: The cemetery is a little distance from town, near the Polish cemetery and a clump of pine trees. Only one headstone stands; another leans against it. Several other stones lay on the ground, broken and scattered among trees. The local Jewish Community called it the "Good Place". Goniadz is about 50 miles from Warsaw. 4000 Jews from this town perished in Treblinka. There is a Yizkor book. The one remaining stone was of Ari Hayim ben Saul Moses. Source: April 11, 1996 The Washington Jewish Week story of the visit of Harold Black to his birthplace. [1996]and [May 2009]
Located south of the village on the right side of the road to Downar on the military map in 1930. because of damage in WWII and subsequent years, the cemetery has dozens of monuments or fragments as well as traces of mass graves. Most gravestones are a fairly rare type: hidden in a concrete "hood". Among the grasses are individual simple, granite gravestones. photos. photos. [May 2009]
burial list and gravestone photos [August 2014]
burial list [Jan 2015]
MASS GRAVE:
Also a place for burial of Holocaust victims murdered in the first days after the outbreak of war in 1941. Andrzej Żbikowski in "Pogromy and Murder of Jews in Łomżyńskie Białostocczyźnie Summer 1941" reproduced in the book Around Jedwabne describes one of these events: "Balonowski called the police commander and Perkowski Potocki and said to them that he had received an order from the Germans to all the Jews accused of collaboration with communists and arrested three Poles excavatedto down at the cemetery. (....) One of the policemen hit the first two Jews in the back of the head with a hammer, breaking them skull and the men fell to the bottom. (....) Total murdered were 20 people of all ages, including women." The cemetery has been registered as landmark A-448/91. [May 2009]