Story Summary:
The Narevker UV Society was a Jewish immigrant benevolent group formed in New York in 1901 by former residents of Narewka, Poland, to provide support, burial plots, and a sense of community in their new homeland. Rooted in the traditions of a once-thriving village later destroyed in the Holocaust, the society preserved the memory of Narewka through its cemetery plot at Mount Hebron and one of the earliest Holocaust memorials in Queens. Though the society eventually faded, it stands as a powerful example of how immigrant communities sustained identity, connection, and remembrance across generations and continents. ~Blog by Deirdre Mooney Poulos
From Narewka to New York: An Immigrant Society’s Legacy
In the early 1900s, a group of Jewish immigrants from the small Polish village of Narewka arrived in New York. They brought with them more than just memories of home. What they carried was a deep sense of community and mutual responsibility, shaped by generations of life in a close-knit shtetl near the edge of the Białowieża Forest.
In 1901, these immigrants established the Narevker UV Society, a landsmanshaft formed to support fellow townspeople in the new world. Like many such societies, it was a lifeline for newcomers, providing companionship, emergency funds, and access to burial plots. The society created a permanent resting place in Queens at Mount Hebron Cemetery, ensuring that members could be buried with dignity among people who shared their language, customs, and past.
Back in Narewka, Jewish life had long been rooted in tradition. The community made up the vast majority of the town’s population and maintained a synagogue, schools, and a busy marketplace. But life was never easy. The Jewish residents lived through czarist crackdowns, economic hardship, and antisemitic hostility between the wars. Still, they endured. That endurance was shattered in 1941 when German forces occupied the region. Hundreds of Jews from Narewka were murdered in mass shootings or deported to ghettos and concentration camps. The wooden synagogue was desecrated. Homes were set ablaze. By the end of the war, almost nothing of the Jewish presence in Narewka remained. The soul of the village had been extinguished.
Thousands of miles away, the members of the Narevker UV Society mourned the destruction of their hometown from afar. The society, once focused on everyday survival in New York, became something more, a vessel of memory. Its members marked their grief in stone. They erected a Holocaust memorial at Mount Hebron Cemetery to honor those who had perished and continued to gather for commemorations, burials, and community events.
Among those buried in the society’s cemetery section are Morris Levitzky and Abraham Greenberg, who once served as secretaries of the Narevker UV. Their graves lie beside others who had shared the journey from Poland to America, from the hardships of immigration to the quiet rituals of remembrance.
As time passed and generations moved on, the society faded. But its impact endures. In the cemetery rows it once tended, one finds headstones etched with Yiddish inscriptions, plaques dedicated to the dead of Narewka, and monuments that whisper of a vanished world. These stones speak not only of loss, but of resilience.
The story of the Narevker UV Society is not just about survival. It is about the refusal to forget. It is the story of ordinary people who carried their village across an ocean and chose to remember its joys and tragedies with care. In the quiet of Mount Hebron Cemetery, Narewka lives on in memory, in stone, and in the legacy of those who would not let it disappear.
~Blog by Deirdre Mooney Poulos
Work Cited:
JewishGen KehilaLinks – Narewka Jewish Community Page
https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Narewka/
JewishGen Yizkor Book Project – Pinkas Hakehillot Polin (Narewka entry)
https://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/pinkas_poland/pol8_00459.html
International Jewish Cemetery Project – Narewka Cemetery Overview
https://iajgscemetery.org/eastern-europe/poland/narewka
Museum of Family History – Narewka Holocaust Memorial at Mount Hebron
https://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/hm-narewka-mh.htm
