Cemeteries are very signifcant for the culture of the thousand-year-old Przemyśl. The history of the town is refected in the fates of particular people who lived here. It was those people who added colour to the life in town. A multiethnic border town, Przemyśl had a quite special atmosphere. Today the faint traces of that atmosphere can only be found in the surviving cemeteries, in the peculiar sound of old surnames on the tombstones and the multitude of religious faiths and their symbols.
The Jewish Cemetery. Founded around 1860, it is surrounded by a wall built in 1913 and its main entrance faces Słowackiego Street. The oldest, central part of the cemetery, is occupied by the oldest, mainly turn-of-century tombstones, stone steles ornamented with traditional symbolic bas-reliefs. Graves and monuments to commemorate the Jews murdered in World War 2 are found here. That cemetery was founded when the old Jewish cemetery, (now in Rakoczego Street) functioning since the 16th century, started lacking room. There are no longer any tombstones in the area of the old cemetery. They were taken away by the Nazis during WW2. The only remnant of the old structure of the cemetery is a brick wall and a small gate which joined the cemetery with the old foundation of the Jewish hospital.