In the 15th century, after a wave of anti-Semitic speeches in Lower Silesia and other Lower Silesian towns, the Jews from Kamienna Góra were expelled from the town.

In the modern period, Jews started settling down in the area after the emancipation edict of 1812. In 1821, a Jewish community was established in the town, which was initially a branch of a Jewish community in Jelenia Góra. In 1864 the Jewish Community Co-operative in Kamienna Góra gained independence and corporate rights. At that time, it included the districts of Kamienna Góra and Bolków.

Initially, the Jews from Kamienna Góra held their services in the house of prayer, which was located on the first floor of the house at Friedrichstr. 21 from 1826 onwards (presently Adama Mickiewicza Street). The synagogue was built and financed from the funds of the Jewish community and, on 12 May 1858, it was consecrated in the presence of a government representative as well as the local district and municipal authorities. It was a free-standing building at what was then Wallstraße 21 (presently Aleja Wojska Polskiego). In 1866, a community house was built next to the synagogue, with a school and a meeting hall inside. The synagogue in Kamienna Góra was burnt down in November 1938, during the Kristallnacht pogrom, and subsequently demolished. The heavily reconstructed communal house, with residential and commercial premises and a shop on the ground floor, has survived to the present day (Aleja Wojska Polskiego 40).

There was only 72 Jewish residents in the district of Kamienna Góra in 1840, and the maximum number of  Jews, 207, was recorded in 1880. From the 1880s onwards, the number of Jews in Kamienna Góra and the surrounding area declined steadily, and only 90 Jewish residents remained there in 1925.

At the beginning of the 1940s, the Jews from Kamienna Góra were deported to the so-called transit camps for Jews from Lower Silesia in Prędocice, Krzeszów and Rybna, and then, they were sent from Wrocław to concentration camps and extermination places – e.g., Auschwitz, Treblinka, the extermination camps in the east and Theresienstadt.

After World War II, Kamienna Góra became one of dozens of Jewish settlement places in Lower Silesia. In June 1946, 1,661 Jews lived in Kamienna Góra, most of whom emigrated from the town in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Description

The first Jewish cemetery was established in Kamienna Góra in 1822, by the road to the former slaughterhouse. A fence was built around it in 1824, and linden trees were planted in 1835. It was located in the vicinity of the Catholic necropolis, on Waldenburgerstraße (presently Katowicka Street ). A wooden funeral home was also built next to the cemetery; however it was soon demolished. Members of the most well-known Jewish families from Kamienna Góra - the Buttermilchs, the Frankensteins or the Prerauers – were buried in the cemetery. In 1866, Josef Hass was also buried there – he was a Jewish soldier who served in the Prussian army and was heavily wounded during the Battle of Trautenau, during the Austro-Prussian War, and died in the hospital in Kamienna Góra. A monument was erected to commemorate him, which was probably located by the cemetery wall  . At the cemetery, burials took place until the early 1880s, when a new Jewish cemetery was established in Kamienna Góra.  

The cemetery is located on a hill, a gravel road and concrete fence posts – which have survived until today - separate it from the present municipal cemetery on its southern side, there is a preserved piece of the cemetery wall on the northern side, there is a wall of a farm building on the western side and horizontal wooden logs on the eastern side. Based on the “cemetery card” created in 1988, 23 tombstones have survived until today, the oldest ones are from 1817 and there is one from the second half of the 20th century. At the necropolis, there might have been tombstones older than the cemetery as according to historical sources graves of a Jewish family, the Kallmans (Jacob and Feigel), who died in Kamienna Góra before the establishment of the Jewish necropolis were moved there from the Catholic cemetery.

The cemetery has survived to the present day thanks to the commitment of local community workers and regionalists as well as a volunteer group  „Antyschematy”, who performed comprehensive restoration works at the necropolis in 2003. At that time, a lapidarium consisting of broken pieces of matzevot was created in the cemetery.

The cemetery was established on a rectangular plan. The matzevot are located in its central part, arranged in a row. There are inscriptions in Hebrew and German on the matzevot. The tombstones - facing east - are arranged in even rows. Based on the information in the "cemetery card", there are tombstones in the necropolis that were moved there from the area near the municipal slaughterhouse, which may suggest that there are matzevot from the liquidated new Jewish cemetery at Prince Bolek Street.

Author of the note: Tamara Włodarczyk

Bibliography

• Brilling B., Die jüdischen Gemeinden Mittelschlesiens. Entstehung und Geschichte, Stuttgart 1972.
• Falkenstein P., Die Synagogengemeinde zu Landeshut [in:] Heimatbuch des Kreises Landeshut i. Schl., Landeshut i. Schles, 1929, Band II, p. 389.
• Card of the Jewish cemetery in Kamienna Góra, ed. R. Rózga, 1987.
• Wodziński M., Hebrajskie inskrypcje na Śląsku XIII-XVIII wieku, Wrocław 1996.

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