At the time of the proclamation of the edict, 32 Jewish families lived in Pyskowice.

On 23 June 1822, the local synagogue burnt down in the great fire of the town. A brick synagogue was erected in its place.

The turn of the 20th century saw increased emigration of Upper Silesian Jews to major urban centres within Germany and in the 1920s - also geopolitical changes. In 1905, 132 Jews lived in the town (2.7% of the total population), in 1926, there were 93 Jews living in Pyskowice (1.4% of the total population).

The final period came under Nazi rule in Germany after 1933, and especially after 1937, when the community in Pyskowice lost its by a decision of the Council of the League of Nations in Geneva, legal protection was granted to the Jewish minority in Upper Silesia in accordance with the 1922 Polish-German Convention.

During the so-called Kristallnacht of 9/10 November 1938, organised pogroms against the Jewish population took place throughout Germany. The wave of violence also swept Pyskowice, where the synagogue was set on fire and numerous Jewish properties were vandalised.

Already during the war, the last Jews of Pyskowice were deported to ghettos in Zagłębie Dąbrowskie. Some were most likely sent to the gas chambers of the German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The description

The cemetery of the Jewish religious community of Pyskowice was established in mid-April 1830 in the erstwhile village of Zaolszany. Previously, the deceased from this area had been buried in Wielowieś.

The necropolis was founded on an irregularly shaped plot with a total area of 59.5 acres, located south of the intersection of the current Zaolszany and Wrzosowa streets. A rectangular section of 0.2 hectares deep within the plot was designated as the burial area. An access path was set out along the eastern boundary of the cemetery.

As death certificates of the Jewish population of Pyskowice from the years 1813–1847 have not been preserved until today, it is not possible to establish the identity of the first person buried in the local cemetery. However, there are surviving sources which provide information on burials of deceased Jews from the rural areas forming part of the Pyskowice Jewish community. According to available data, the earliest documented person buried in Zaolszany was twenty-four-year-old Albert Holländer, who died on 20 October 1830 in Dolne Dzierżno. The oldest surviving gravestone in the cemetery – with inscriptions exclusively in Hebrew – marks the grave of a man with an unidentified German name and the Hebrew name Yehuda, who died on 1 April 1833.

As the cemetery started to fill up – most likely at the turn of the 1890s – its grounds were extended to the north with a plot of ca. 0.25 hectares, giving it a total area of about half a hectare. Its entire perimeter was surrounded with a wrought-iron fence on a clinker-brick foundation, and a rectangular pre-burial house was built next to the road (it still exists today).

It is estimated that no fewer than 400 people were laid to rest in the Pyskowice cemetery. The last recorded burial was Louis Perl, who died on 19 January 1941 at the age of 78.

On 4 July 1939, the necropolis became property of the Association of Jews in Germany. It did not suffer any deliberate damage until June 1940. In early November 1941, the building of the pre-burial house was to be remodelled and used as living quarters for the Jews still remaining in the town – by the decision of the town mayor, they had to leave their previous dwellings by 30 November 1941. Probably at the beginning of 1943, all the ironwork in the cemetery, from the fence spans to the railings around graves, was dismantled and handed over to the army.

On 10 June 1943, the cemetery was seized by the Gestapo and placed under the administration of the district tax office. By that point, no part of the grounds had been sold, including the sections to the south and west, which had not been used for burial purposes. Despite being stripped of the fence, the cemetery survived in a good condition until 1945.

In the recent years, the cemetery has undergone several rounds of clean-up works which have improved its condition. About 150 tombstones, the pre-burial house (in a state of disrepair), the foundation of the fence (about 20-30 cm high), the remains of a brick wall and an old-growth forest have been preserved to this day.

Author of the note: Sławomir Pastuszka

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