In 1787, there were 48 Jews living in Gorzów Śląski. At that time, there was already a house of prayer in the town, which was bought from the owner of Gorzów, Leopold von Osorowski, in July 1796.

The driving force behind the development of the Jewish community was the “Civic Relations Edict” on 1812. This document introduced a fundamental change in the situation of Jews in the Kingdom of Prussia, making them partly legally equal to Christian citizens. At the time the edict was issued, there were 19 Jewish families living in Gorzów Śląski.

In 1845, 121 Jews lived in Gorzów Śląski (12% of the total population).

On 23 July 1847, the Prussian authorities adopted the "Act on Jewish relations", which regulated many legal issues concerning organizations and Jewish communities and determined the territorial scope of Synagogue precincts. Based on the Act, the statute of the Synagogue Community in Gorzów Śląski was adopted, thanks to which it obtained legal personality.

A new synagogue was built in the period from 1864 to 1865.

The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was characterised by an increased emigration of Upper Silesian Jews to larger urban centres in Germany. In 1926, there were only 43 Jews in Gorzów Śląski.

Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933 significantly changed the situation of the Jewish population in Germany.

During the so-called Kristallnacht of 9-10 November 1938, organised pogroms against the Jewish population took place in Germany. Such actions were also organized in Gorzów Śląski, where the synagogue was burnt down and other property that belonged to Jews was demolished, inter alia. Those events intensified the emigration of the Jewish population. Based on the census of May 1939, there were no Jews in the town.

So far, one of the least known and researched eighteenth-century Jewish cemeteries in Upper Silesia is undoubtedly the cemetery in Gorzów Śląski.

The Description

The cemetery was established on a plot the size of which was 14 by 18 cubits, which, on 6 August 1753, was donated to the local Jewish community by the then owner of the town, Franz Leopold Osarowski. It was located north-east of the town centre, on the east side of the road to Byczyna, the present-day Byczyna Street. On 29 May 1805, the local Jewish community, represented by its elders - Salomon Leubuscher, Abraham David Wartenberger and Michael Fiedler - purchased some extra land from Leopold Osarowski to make the necropolis larger.

The cemetery, in the shape of a rectangle with a total area of approximately 3,500 square metres, was surrounded by a wooden fence, and there was a funeral home in its south-west corner, accessed by a pathway from the main road. The number of people buried at the cemetery and the date of the last funeral are not known. It was undoubtedly before May 1939, as there were no longer any Jewish residents in that area by that time.

Following the agreement of 19 January 1939, the necropolis was sold to the town by the last members of the Jewish community in Gorzów. The agreement stipulated a thirty-five-year period of inviolability of the graves with tombstones and it allowed the relatives to visit the graves at any time. Unaware of the agreement, the representatives of the Gliwice office of the Association of Jews in Germany - who most probably assumed that the cemetery became the property of the Association on 4 July 1939 - commissioned the valuation of the necropolis for renovation purposes as repeated acts of devastation had taken place there since November 1938. On 19 July 1939, the cost estimate for the repair works was prepared by master builder Alfred Runkel from Wołczyn, and it was RM 350. He proposed, inter alia, repositioning of overturned tombstones and placing them in concrete mortar, removal of the remains of the damaged funeral home and the front part of the wooden fence, installation of a new gate and wicket gate, and placing a wire fence around some part of the site. Although, initially, the proposed works were commissioned, they were not performed, which, on 17 May 1940, was justified by the Jewish side on the grounds that the cemetery no longer belonged to them. The further fate of the cemetery remains unknown, although there is no doubt that its condition was very poor in 1945.

After World War II, the cemetery, left unattended, was subject to further degradation, which was mainly due to the human factor. Today, it is a square within the boundaries of the neighbouring school complex. Only two tombstones have been found on the site, which are knocked over and covered by a layer of earth now. However, there may be more tombstones that have survived until today.

Author of the note: Sławomir Pastuszka

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