The earliest record of the town’s sole Jewish inhabitant dates back to 1672. It was only after Lidzbark was annexed by Prussia that a larger Jewish community developed there. The new authorities resettled 16 Jewish families to the suburbs of Lidzbark Welski, thus founding a settlement called Pólko. The Jewish merchants and craftsmen were most probably supposed to be an effective competition for the inhabitants of the town. The Jews eventually started to gradually settle in the urban area itself, especially in the first quarter of the 19th century. The first Jews in Lidzbark were members of the Salomon and Lichtenstein families.

The Lidzbark community was developing quite dynamically, evidenced by the fact that the first local house of prayer was opened as early as 1815. It was followed by the establishment of a cemetery 13 years later. In 1827, the community bought the former chapel at today’s Kopernika Street (earlier called Synagogenstraße) from the local Evangelical parish and transformed into a synagogue. It is estimated that at the beginning of the 19th century, Jews already accounted for more than 10% of the population of the town – in 1837, it had 230 Jewish residents. They were mainly involved in trade (they were the dominant force in commerce, running 30 shops in 1900) and crafts (especially the people living in Pólko). Some Jewish entrepreneurs formed part of the local petty industry sector – in the late 19th century, Asher’s tannery was considered the biggest company in the town. The Jewish community of Lidzbark reached its peak size in the 1870s with almost 700 members (ca. 20% of the total population). As was the case in entire Prussia, the process of assimilation was quickly progressing, leading to an ever greater social and cultural integration of Lidzbark Jews with the local German population. The Unification of Germany saw a mass phenomenon described as “flight from the East,” namely large-scale migration of the populace from smaller localities to Berlin and other large centres of the Empire. The Jewish population of Lidzbark, too, was impacted by this trend. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only 250 Jews remaining in the town (about 7% of the population).

The local community experienced a sudden decline with the incorporation of Lidzbark Welski to the Second Republic of Poland (1920). The vast majority of Jews were entirely Germanised and thus chose to retain German citizenship and leave for cities in inner regions of the Reich. Only ca. 50 Jewish people remained in the town, soon joined by newcomers from other parts of the Polish state. The size of the community stabilised in the 1930s at ca. 70–80 members (over 1.5% of the total population). The local Jews continued to mostly make a living from trade, but there were also some people working in manufacturing or providing legal services.

Despite significantly shrinking in size, the LIdzbark community played an important role among other Jewish centres in the Lubawa Land and the part of Masuria incorporated into Poland (one of the residents of the town was Henoch Stawicki, shochet working in the districts of Brodnica, Lubawa, and Działdowo). The year 1932 saw the foundation of the Jewish Religious Community in Brodnica, which came to encompass the previously separate communities of Lidzbark, Nowe Miasto Lubawskie, Lubawa, and Działdów. Despite financial difficulties, the Lidzbark synagogue was open before the outbreak of war. In 1939, the Lidzbark Welski community owned a synagogue, a house of prayer, a mikveh, and a cemetery. There was no separate religious elementary school in the town. Jewish children attended either the local Catholic or Evangelical school. In the school year 1933/1934, 14 Jewish children attended the public primary school in Lidzbark.

At the outbreak of World War II, Lidzbark was still inhabited by a small population of Jews. They were arrested by the Germans and deported to concentration camps and extermination sites. The occupiers soon demolished the synagogue. The lists of Holocaust victims include the names of over 70 Jews associated with Lidzbark, mostly people who were born in the town. The majority of them were deported from Berlin and other German cities to ghettos in Theresienstadt, Kaunas, Riga, Minsk, Litzmannstadt (Łódź), Izbica, and Piaski. Those who survived the deportations were eventually killed in Nazi German camps and extermination sites: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibór, Kulmhof (Chełmno nad Nerem), Sachsenhausen, and Majdanek.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Lidzbark was founded in 1828 on a plot located outside the erstwhile town limits, near the road leading to Zieluń and Żuromin (the railway line connecting Działdowo with Brodnica was later built in the area). A brick fence used to separate the necropolis from today's Zieluńska Street and a small pre-burial house used to stand at the entrance to the necropolis. The burial site remained in use until the end of the 1930s.

Today, the cemetery is located at the junction of Zieluńska Street and Kraziewicza Street, on an artificially elevated and levelled hill. It is easier to access from the side of Kraziewicza Street. The grounds are only partially cleaned up and remain unfenced. The cemetery covers an area of ca. 0.5 hectare. It was probably vandalised during the German occupation and continued to fall into decline ever since. Relics of ca. 30 tombstones have survived in the cemetery (the number refers only to the objects visible on the surface). These are exclusively supporting stones and bases, present both in the northern and the southern part of the cemetery. A visible row of graves can be discerned in the latter section. A heat pipeline has been constructed in the western part of the necropolis. No matzevot or even fragments have been preserved.

Właściciel praw autorskich do opisu: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN.