The first family settled there around 1775. Soon a Jewish community (corporation) began to take shape. Initially, meetings and prayers took place in the warehouse building of the merchant Schwarz in Hintergaße. After purchasing a plot of land at Mönchsanger, a wooden synagogue was built in 1828. From the 1820s, there was a private Jewish school (Elementarschule). The new brick synagogue building was completed in 1869. Until the 1930s, the Jewish community included, apart from Chojnice, the surrounding villages: Pawłowo, Ogorzeliny, Swornigacie.

In the early 1880s, there were anti-Jewish riots during which the synagogue building was set on fire. Further riots broke out in the spring and summer of 1900 over an alleged ritual murder. Butcher Adolph Levi was accused of killing 18-year-old high school student Ernst Winter. The army put down the riots in Chojnice; nevertheless, anti-Jewish incidents broke out in other towns of West Prussia.

By the mid-1880s, the Jewish community was gaining members, but in the following decades demographic regression became more and more noticeable. In 1815, there were between 45 and 80 Jews living in Chojnice, in 1821 - 74 (they constituted 2.9% of the total population), in 1831 - 194 (6.9%), in 1848 - 341 (7.7%), in 1855 - 429 (8.5%), in 1861 - 371, in 1871 - 497 (6.9%), in 1885 - 563 (11.2%), in 1895 - 430, in 1900 - 364 (3.4%), in 1910 - 257 (2.1%), in 1921 - 111/ 34, in 1931 - 58 (21 families), in 1938 - 69.

During the Second Polish Republic, local German Jews partly left the town for Germany. The community was reluctant to accept newcomers from the depths of the Polish lands. In 1923, only four families came from Małopolska, out of 115 people belonging to the Jewish community. Outside Chojnice, single people lived in the municipality; e.g. in 1931, two in Ogorzeliny and Swornigacie, three in Pawłowo.

The situation changed fundamentally in 1932, when the network of Jewish communities in the Pomeranian and Poznań provinces was reorganised. The boundaries of the Jewish community in Chojnice were extended by the abolished Jewish communities from the Chojnice and Tuchola districts, i.e. in Czersk (single people lived in Czersk, Brusy, Karsin, Lug and Lubnia) and Tuchola (Tuchola - 51 and 20 people in Wysoka Wieś, Rosochatka, Śliwice, Cekcynie, Kęsowo). Thus, the size of the Jewish community in Chojnice increased slightly to 151 people in 1934. In the following years, demographic regression reappeared. In 1937, 131 Jews lived in the community, and 1938 - 69.

As the community's territory expanded in the 1930s, so did its assets. In 1938, she had movable property worth 2,526 zlotys and 64,400 zlotys in real estate, with debts amounting to 2,000 zlotys. In Chojnice, these were two cemeteries (only the new one was estimated), a synagogue, a building, ½ morgen of land; in Czersk - a synagogue, a cemetery and a morgue; in Tuchola - a synagogue with a garden, a cemetery, a ritual bath, a house for the watchman, a gravedigger's outbuilding, two morgens of land.

During World War II, Jews who did not leave Chojnice before the German army entered in 1939 became one of the first victims of the Holocaust; one of the families was executed. The destruction of traces of material heritage, mainly synagogues and cemeteries, soon followed.

The Description

The old Jewish cemetery in Chojnice is located today at the intersection of Mickiewicza and Zielona Streets (Polish: ul. Mickiewicza, Zielona); it is situated on a plan of an uneven trapezoid similar in shape to a triangle. It was founded at the end of the 18th century to establish the Jewish community. After filling up at the end of the 19th century, it was closed. It covered an area of 0.5 hectares. During the interwar period, it no longer had a burial function. It was destroyed during the Second World War by the Germans. After the war, a playground was set up on the side of Zielona Street. The gravedigger's house and garden (plot no. 1196/1) remain in the southern part at 41 Mickiewicza Street. There is an unused green area (plot No. 1196/2) overgrown with few trees (hornbeams, maples, sycamores, birches). At present, the necropolis area is fenced off, and there is no matzevot left. On the cadastral map, the cemetery area coincides with the boundaries of plots no. 1196/1 and 1196/2. The boundaries of the necropolis are legible in the south-eastern and north-eastern parts. They are delimited by Mickiewicza and Zielona Streets and the fence. The southern boundary coincides with the southern elevation of the house at 41 Mickiewicza Street.

References

• Z. Karpus, Gmina Wyznaniowa Żydowska w Chojnicach w latach 1920-1939, [in:] Gminy Wyznaniowe Żydowskie w województwie pomorskim w okresie międzywojennym, Toruń 1995, pp. 157–165.
• T. Kawski, Inwentarze gmin żydowskich z Pomorza i Wielkopolski wschodniej w okresie międzywojennym (1918/20–1939), „Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej” 2006, no. 1, table 1, p. 75.
• Magdzińska, Chojnice 1900 r. – zajścia antyżydowskie czy pogrom?, [in:] Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku, vol. 2, Warszawa 2019, pp. 157–178.
• M. Pielka, Chojnice 1900 – przypadek oskarżenia o mord rytualny w świetle polskiej prasy, „Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Prace Historyczne”, 2016, no. 143, notebook. 1, pp. 89–106;
• G. Salinger, Zur Erinnerung und zum Gedenken. Die einstigen jüdischen Gemeinden Westpreußens, New York 2009, Bd. 2;
• Śladami żydowskimi po Kaszubach. Przewodnik, ed. M. Borzyszkowska-Szewczyk, Ch. Pletzing, Gdansk - Lübeck - München 2010, p. 198;
• M. Wołos, Cmentarze żydowskie w województwie pomorskim w latach 1920-1939, [in:] Gminy Wyznaniowe Żydowskie w województwie pomorskim w okresie międzywojennym, Toruń 1995, pp. 220–221.

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