These were members of the community in Gąbin or Sochaczew. In 1526, Archbishop Jan Łaski forbade Jews to settle in Łowicz.

The town was famous for its annual and weekly fairs. The largest of them was a St. Matthew Fair, starting on September 21 and lasting up to even six weeks. In 1724, merchants from Łowicz obtained a privilege from Archbishop Teodor Potocki, according to which Jews could stay in the city during fairs for no longer than three days. From 1738 this time was shortened; they were allowed to visit only once a year, during the St. Matthew's Fair, and they could only engage in wholesale trade.

In 1793, Łowicz found itself in the Prussian partition. This meant abolition of the existing restrictions. In 1797, the first four Jews received the right to settle in the town. Soon a Jewish religious community which is a branch of the parent community was established, subordinate to the commune in Sochaczew. However, there was no cemetery, and the dead were buried on the following Saturday.

Despite the changes, the Christian townspeople did not stop trying to remove the Jews from the town. Eventually, a Jewish district was established, whose boundaries were the following streets: Bielawska, Podrzeczna, Wałowa, Długa and Piotrkowska. In 1829, the Jews were ordered to move to a designated location. In the same year, the synagogue supervision was established, and nearby settlements, including Bolimów, were soon incorporated into it, what was tantamount to giving consent to the construction of a synagogue and cemetery.

In the second half of the 19th century, the town experienced economic development due to the launch of the Warsaw-Bydgoszcz Railway in 1845. At that time, small-scale food, metal, and ceramic industry had developed. It was a favorable ground for the development of the community. At the end of the 19th century, there were thirteen cheders in Łowicz; private schools, boarding schools for girls, and the very popular Trade School were also established. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, steam mills, food processing plants, agricultural machinery production plants, artificial fertiliser plants, breweries and oil mills were established. In addition, city also had e.g. The Loan and Savings Society, the Jewish Cooperative Bank, and the Jewish library, where theater performances and lectures were held,. The interwar period brought greater interest from the Jewish community in politics; Zionist organisations were becoming more and more powerful. In 1931, anti-Semitic incidents occurred. Just before the outbreak of World War II, about 4,500  Jews lived in Łowicz.

In 1939, the town was occupied by the Germans. They started persecuting Jews, forcing them to work and pay contributions. In 1940, the Germans established a ghetto covering the streets on the northern side of the New Market Square, including Bielawska, Zduńska, Ciemna, Ciasna, parts of Sienkiewicza and Browarna. The area was provisionally fenced with barbed wire and then walled off with a wall made of bricks from the demolished synagogue. The ghetto was liquidated already in 1941, when most of the prisoners were transported to the ghetto in Warsaw.

A total of approximately 100 people survived the Holocaust. After 1945, a Jewish Committee was established in the town, in which 33 people were registered. However, the post-war Jewish concentration in Łowicz ceased to exist over time.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Łowicz was established around 1829, when the synagogue supervision was registered, on a plot of land donated by Grand Duke Konstanty. At that time it was an area near the village of Zagórze, and at today's Łęczycka street. The cemetery was destroyed by the Nazis during the occupation. The necropolis became a site of mass executions of the Jewish and Polish population. The German occupation authorities used the tombstones to e.g. regulate the Bzura River. After the war, some of the tombstones were recovered, but they were used again, this time as stonemasonry material for the construction of a monument to Polish-Soviet friendship. They were recovered only after the monument was dismantled in 1991.

In 1993, the necropolis area was tidied up. Nowadays, between 200 and 400 tombstones in various forms have been preserved at the Jewish cemetery in Łowicz - these include: steles, tombstones, obelisks and fragments placed in the lapidary. There is a small brick building near the entrance, probably a former funeral home. The historic fence in the form of a brick wall with a gate has also partially survived.

Author of the note: Magda Lucima

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