In 1846, a Jewish merchant, Lothar Hüser, constructed the first two lime kilns in Gogolin. The development of the lime plants provided new jobs, and this created favourable conditions for the development of trade, which was one of the most important sources of income for Jews from Gogolin.

In 1850, there were 17 Jews in Gogolin. In 1880, the number of Jews was 84, while it was 71 in 1885 (2.9% of the total population). The community had its own house of prayer.

The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was characterised by an increased emigration of Upper Silesian Jews to larger urban centres in Germany. That trend was also the case of Gogolin. In 1912, there were still 45 Jews in the town.

After the end of the First World War and the rebirth of the Polish state, the majority of Upper Silesian Jews supported the Germans. As a result of the plebiscite of 20 March 1921, Gogolin remained in Germany.

During the so-called Kristallnacht of 9-10 November 1938, organized pogroms against the Jewish population took place in Germany. With regard to Gogolin, the consequence of that events is unknown.

The outbreak of war in September 1939, intensified the restrictive measures against Jews in the German part of Upper Silesia. However, they were not subject to isolation from the rest of society, nor did the organization of their lives change. It was not until the spring of 1942, that their deportations to ghettos, transit-camps or directly to extermination camps began. Those actions continued - but on a smaller scale - also in 1943.

The Jewish community in Gogolin was associated in a branch that was part of the Synagogue Community in Opole. They also transported and buried their dead in that city. The situation did not change until the late 1850s.

On 9 October 1857, during the court meeting in Gogolin, a local innkeeper, Meyer Fränkel, declared that some land had been handed over free of charge to the branch of a community represented by Salomon Cassirer for the purpose of establishing a burial field there, he also requested to set a deadline for the acceptance of the donation. The case took place on 13 November of the same year, before the district court in Strzelce Opolskie, and, in fact, the gift was granted to the Jewish community in Opole - not the one in Gogolin - which had a legal personality, which was approved and announced to the public by the landrat of Strzelce Opolskie.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Gogolin was established on a rectangular plot of 280 square metres; it was located south-west of the centre of the village, on the west side of the railway line. It was initially accessed by a dirt road, which received the name of Bismarckstrasse later on, the present-day Wyzwolenia Street. After a few years, a Christian cemetery, presently known as the "old" cemetery, was established on its eastern side. Around 1869, a wall made of local limestone was built around the necropolis, which still exists today, with a gate facing the street. A small funeral home with a ritual section and a caretaker's apartment on the ground floor was also built in the south-east corner of the cemetery.

Due to the fact that there are no death certificates of the Jewish population of Gogolin from the years 1847-1874, it is not possible to determine the details of the first people buried in the cemetery. The oldest identified tombstone in that space commemorates a two-month-old Emilia Stenger, who died on 17 October 1858, while the oldest tombstone of an adult can be found on the grave of Johanna Aufrichtig, née Berg, who died on 27 November 1870 at the age of 52. It is reasonable to assume that no more than 120 people rested in the cemetery – those were the members of the local Jewish community, the last of whom was the innkeeper Moritz Hausdorf, who died on 11 February 1941 at the age of 77. It is also worth mentioning that there were already 49 graves in the section for children in July 1889. Later on, a few more graves were created there, most likely only six.

On 4 July 1939, the necropolis became the property of the Association of Jews in Germany. There was no damage to it until July 1940. At the beginning of 1942, a dispute arose between Jews and the administrative authorities over the ownership of two plots of land which clearly belonged to the cemetery and were surrounded by a common fence and which, based on the land and mortgage register, belonged to a private individual and the political community. The case of correcting the entry in the land and mortgage register, which was conducted before the district court in Krapkowice, was not finalised as the cemetery was confiscated by the Gestapo on 10 June 1943, and handed over to the district tax office. It survived intact until 1945.

It should also be added that during World War II, Jewish prisoners of the local forced labour camp from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland were buried in graves, not marked today, at the cemetery. It is likely that prisoners from camps in nearby Otmęcie and Zakrzowie are also buried there.

For several years after the Second World War, the cemetery was maintained by a pre-war caretaker who lived in a funeral home. The funeral home was demolished in the 1960s, due to its poor technical condition. It was probably at that time that the height of the stone wall was reduced, the gate was bricked up and the wall separating the area from the evangelical cemetery was demolished. The municipal authorities cleaned up the cemetery in the 1990s, and the fence was repaired in 2006.

The condition of the cemetery is good. Its area is mowed regularly. There is an information board in front of the cemetery. Approximately 30 tombstones have survived until today.

Author of the note: Sławomir Pastuszka

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