New Jewish Cemetery (Łódź)

The New Jewish Cemetery in Łódź is one of the largest Jewish burial grounds in Europe, spread across more than 40 hectares in the northern Bałuty district on ul. Bracka. People come for its sheer scale, for the ornate tombs of the textile industrialists who built the city, and for the sombre Ghetto Field where tens of thousands of Holocaust victims are buried. It is a central site for anyone tracing Łódź's Jewish and wartime history.

With an estimated 180,000 to 230,000 graves, the cemetery is large enough that wandering its avenues takes time, and quiet stretches feel almost like woodland. The most striking monuments belong to the wealthy manufacturing families who shaped Łódź in the 19th century, including the elaborate mausoleum of Izrael Poznański, the industrialist who donated the land. Many of these tombs carry Art Nouveau detailing, carved stone and mosaic work rather than plain headstones. The contrast between these grand memorials and the simpler rows around them tells much of the city's social story.

The cemetery's southern section, known as the Ghetto Field (Pole Gettowe), holds the mass graves of around 43,000 people who died in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto between 1940 and 1944. Rows of small, uniform markers stretch across open ground, a deliberate departure from the ornamentation elsewhere in the cemetery. This is the emotional core of any visit and the reason the site features so heavily in accounts of the Holocaust in Łódź. It is a place to walk slowly and read the memorial plaques.

The cemetery was established in 1892 to replace an older, overcrowded Jewish burial ground closer to the city centre. For a period it was the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe, a reflection of how large and prosperous Łódź's Jewish community once was. Its survival through the war, when so much Jewish heritage was destroyed, gives it unusual importance as a physical record of that community. Today it is maintained as both a burial ground and a memorial.

The cemetery sits north of the centre in Bałuty, the district that became the wartime ghetto, so it pairs naturally with other Jewish and Holocaust sites when you plan a day around that history. Set aside a couple of hours if you want to reach the Ghetto Field and the main mausoleums without rushing, as the grounds are extensive. It suits travellers with an interest in Jewish heritage, family research or the industrial past of the city rather than those after a quick photo stop. See our Łódź guide for how it connects with the rest of the city.