Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 Foundation

Mojżesz Jaakubowicz with W. John & Maria Koch

In 1999, John and Maria Koch met Mojżesz Jaa­kubowicz who made their first visit to the synagogue and the Jewish cemetery possible.

Mr. Jaakubowicz had been an officer in the Polish army. He was taken prisoner of war by the Soviet Army in September 1939 and deported to Siberia where he worked as a slave laborer in the goldmines for several years. It was there that he met his wife who with great devotion looked after him he was very ill and near death; she probably saved his life. Both came back to Poland in 1945 and settled in Rychbach / Dzierżoniów.

Mr. Jaakubowicz unofficially looked after the synagogue and the ce­metery since the year the synagogue was closed and he soon became the last Jew of the once so nume­rous Jewish post-war congrega­tion of Rychbach / Dzierżoniów.

Shortly before his death in 2004, Mr. Jaakubowicz  was honored for his services to the Jewish community.

Mr. and Mrs. Jaakubowicz’s Gravestone

According to his wishes, he was not buried in the Jewish cemetery, but at the side of his wife (who was not Jewish) in the Municipal Communal Cemetery in Dzierżoniów. The prominent memorial stone on his grave was recently stolen but will be replaced, courtesy of Mr. Rafael Blau.

Note: The rediscovered and now modified gravestone of Mr. and Mrs. Jaakubowicz was recently returned to the communal cemetery through the initiative of Rafael Blau and John and Maria Koch.