They lived in the vicinity of today’s Kościelna, św. Anny, and Jarosława Dąbrowskiego streets. A synagogue existed in the town at the time, probably erected in the mid-14th century. After the expulsion of Jews from Strzegom in 1453, the synagogue was converted into a Catholic temple, named the Church of the Blessed Sacrament and St. Barbara. It still exists today.

Jews started to return to Strzegom after the proclamation of the Emancipation Edict of 1812. The first to settle in the town was the family of Itzig Feibel. An official Jewish community was established in the town in 1842, formally operating as a branch of the Świdnica kehilla since 1859. During the 19th century, the number of Jews in the town continued to grow – from 29 in 1849 to 140 in 1880. In the following years, a part of Strzegom’s Jews decided to emigrate to larger urban centres. As a result, 100 Jewish people were recorded in the town in 1907.

In the modern period, the local Jews did not build their own synagogue. From the 1840s until the 20th century, religious services were held in rented rooms. The first house of prayer was located in a building owned by Moses Naphtali and operated in the 1840s and 1850s. The subsequent one was organised at 152 Schweidnitzerstraße (today’s Świdnicka Street).

In the early 1940s, the Jews of Strzegom who had not managed to leave Germany were deported to the so-called transit camps for Lower Silesian Jews in Prędocice (Tormersdorf), Krzeszów (Grüssau), and Rybna (Riebnig), and then transferred to Wrocław and sent to concentration and extermination camps – including Auschwitz, Treblinka, the Minsk ghetto, death camps in the East, and Theresienstadt.

After World War II, Polish Jews settled in Strzegom. In July 1946, the town had 1,210 Jewish residents, most of whom emigrated within the first five years after the war.

The Description

The first Jewish cemetery in Strzegom was opened on 19 May 1815. It was located in the eastern part of the town, adjacent to the Protestant cemetery and next to the former hospital chapel. The necropolis was set up on a polygonal, roughly triangular plan, with the main cemetery avenue accessed through a gate on its northern side. It soon proved insufficient for the growing Jewish community, so a decision was made to purchase another plot of land for burial purposes. However, after the transaction was concluded, the city did not authorise the opening of the new cemetery at that particular site as it stood against the area development plan. Instead, the Jewish community was offered a properly prepared and cleared section in the municipal cemetery. The new cemetery was officially opened on 29 September 1929, with the ceremony described in Breslauer Jüdische Gemeindeblatt. However, it is uncertain whether it was ever used. Burials in the old cemetery continued well into the 1930s, as evidenced by surviving tombstones from 1936 (Feibel) and 1937 (Siegfried Proskauer and Benno Wolff).

In the early 1940s, the necropolis was property of the Świdnica religious district. It had an area of 90 square metres. As of 1944, it held 77 gravestones and stone monuments. The mayor of Strzegom was interested in taking over the property for free; however, the regulations in force prohibited such a solution. With its value appraised at RM 420 (Reichsmarks), the cemetery was sold by the Strzegom community on 13 October 1944.

After World War II, the cemetery was taken over by the community of Polish Jews who settled in Strzegom and continued to be used for burial purposes. It was active until the early 1960s, as evidenced by the surviving tombstone of Rywka Troper dating from 1963. According to a description from 1952, the Strzegom cemetery was already devastated at that time – the fence was missing and the tombstones were damaged.

In 1991, there were about 50 gravestones preserved in the cemetery, the oldest of which dated from 1859. The site has been tidied up in restoration works carried out in 2012–2013 by students and teachers from the Strzegom School Complex and the German Association for the Promotion of Employment and Qualification (Verein zur Förderung von Beschäftigung und Qualifizierung) from Bad Freienwalde. The initiative was developed in cooperation with the Strzegom Town Hall, the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, and the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland. The scope of the works, which were funded from the European Social Fund, included: repairing the stone wall, lifting up fallen gravestones, and removing thicket and rubbish from the cemetery. Among the people working on the site were unemployed persons from the districts of Märkisch-Oderland and Barnim, while the renovation project was prepared by Günter Grützner.

In 1993, Marcin Wodziński prepared a detailed inventory of the Jewish cemetery in Strzegom. He recorded 105 graves, of which 35 were marked with tombstones. The necropolis area is surrounded by a stone wall and can be accessed through a padlocked gate. The cemetery is owned by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland. To date, the cemetery has not been entered in the register of historical monuments.

Author of the note: Tamara Włodarczyk

Bibliography

• “Aus den Gemeinden – Striegau,“ Breslauer Jüdische Gemeindeblatt 1929, no. 10, p. 182.
• Brilling B., Die jüdischen Gemeinden Mittelschlesiens. Entstehung und Geschichte, Stuttgart 1972.
• Führer durch die jüdische Gemeindeverwaltung und Wohlfahrtspflege in Deutschland 1932-1933 / herausgegeben von der Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Deutschen Juden, B. Schlesinger (ed.), Berlin 1933.
• Połomski F., “Zawłaszczenie i sprzedaż cmentarzy żydowskich w latach II wojny światowej na Śląsku. Ze studiów nad prawem własności w III Rzeszy,” Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis, no. 815 (Studia nad Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi, vol. 11).
• Urban K., Cmentarze żydowskie, synagogi i domy modlitwy w Polsce w latach 1944–1966 (wybór materiałów), Kraków 2006.
• Wodziński M., Hebrajskie inskrypcje na Śląsku XIII-XVIII wieku, Wrocław 1996.
• Wodziński Marcin, Teczka ewidencyjna cmentarza żydowskiego w Strzegomiu, typescript, Wrocław 1993, Archives of WUOZ Delegatura w Wałbrzychu.

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