Like many countries in Eastern Europe, Poland is dotted with hundreds of Jewish cemeteries left behind when the country's Jewish population was decimated during World War II. But Poland's Jewish community and its Prison Service are teaming up to care for the grave sites and combat anti-Semitism at the same time.
It may not be normal work for prison inmates, but the Polish Prison Service has come up with an unusual task for their prisoners, cleaning and restoring abandoned Jewish cemeteries.
But as prison spokesman Nikodem Banas explains, the program is about more than just pulling weeds and polishing headstones.
He says before prisoners are sent out to work, they are given a series of seminars by members of the Jewish community to teach them how to behave respectfully in a Jewish cemetery – to cover their heads, for example. But Banas says the lectures are also meant to give the prisoners a broader understanding of Jewish culture, and of the important role Jews have played in Polish society.
Before the Second World War, Poland was home to around 3.5-million Jews – the largest Jewish population in Europe. But millions were murdered during the Holocaust, and communist-era purges drove thousands more into exile. Today only a tiny fraction of Poland's Jewish community is left. With no family members to care for them, hundreds of Jewish cemeteries across the country have fallen into disrepair.
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