Jews began to settle in Pruszków in the 1880s, which coincided with the urbanisation of the locality. It was eventually chartered in 1916, during the German occupation. Most of the local Jews were involved in trade and crafts, later becoming pioneers in the industrialisation of the town. Among the Jewish-owned enterprises active in the town was the brickyard established by Jonas Abramson and Szulim Ditman, needle factory run by Ludwik Bartholemy and Leon Likiernik, faience factory of Jakub Teichfeld and Stanisław Ehrenreich, ink factory of Karol Rattner, and ultramarine factory of Emil Sommer and Dawid Nower.

A Jewish district was formed in Pruszków at the end of the 19th century. Its centre was Zakątna Street. The local Jewish community became independent from the kehilla in Nadarzyn in 1904, after signing purchase agreements concerning development plots for a cemetery and a synagogue. Many Jewish inhabitants of Pruszków belonged to the Orthodox community. There was also an influential group of Hasidim in the town – the followers of the tzaddik from Skierniewice. Three traditional religious societies operated in the community: Linas Hatsedek, Bikur Cholim, and Hachnasat Orchim.

The first census in reborn Poland, carried out in 1921, recorded 971 Jews living in Pruszków (over 6% of the town's population). In the interwar period, the Jewish community grew to comprise 1,500 people, but its share in the overall population fell below 5% just before the outbreak of the war. Most of the 60 Jewish houses in the town were located in the area of the streets Krótka, Prusa, Kościuszki, and Kraszewskiego. There was a Jewish drama club in Pruszków, as well as a Jewish sports club. Young left-wing activists would meet at the local youth library. Children and adolescents could enrol in the “Ibriyah” secular school and a cheder. In the interwar period, Pruszków boasted cells of numerous political parties and organisations of various leanings, including the Orthodox Agudath, the Zionist Mizrachi, the Revisionist Zionists, the Zionist Organisation, and the socialist Bund. The Jewish community had its representatives in the Municipal Council.

The Wehrmacht invaded Pruszków in October 1939. A Judenrat (Jewish Council) was formed in the town with Jan Czarnecki at the helm. An open ghetto was established in November 1940, comprising houses located in the area of the today’s Komorowska, Ceramiczna, Polna, and Armii Krajowej streets. Apart from local Jews, the ghetto population also included people displaced from Nadarzyn and Piastów. The premises of the brickyard at Lipowa Street were used by the Germans as an executions site of Jews and Poles. At the end of January 1941, the prisoners of the Jewish quarter in Pruszków – ca. 1,200 people in total – were transported to Warsaw, where they shared the fate of other ghetto inhabitants, murdered in the gas chambers of the Treblinka extermination camp. A group of 180 Jews remained in Pruszków until the autumn of the same year, used as slave labour in the local railway workshops.

After the end of World War II, Jews who survived the Holocaust started to return to Pruszków. A total of 280 people were registered with the local Jewish Committee, though only half of them lived in the town itself – the rest resided in Piastów, Ursus, Włochy, Gołąbki, Piaseczno, Na Kole, Boernerowo, Raszyn, Okęcie, Jelonki, Nadarzyn, and Otrębusy. With time, almost all of them left Poland.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Pruszków was established in 1904 in the southern part of the town, at the junction of Lipowa Street and Mordechaja Gutowicza (former Bazaltowa) Street. The plot was purchased on the initiative of Mordechaj Gutowicz with the funds donated by the Teichfelds, a well-known family of entrepreneurs from Pruszków. Beforehand, the local Jews had buried their dead in the cemetery in Nadarzyn. The Pruszków cemetery was probably surrounded with a solid brick wall before the World War I. A well was dug at the entrance to the necropolis and a pre-burial house was built on the premises. The cemetery was not destroyed by the Germans during World War II. Only a part of the fence was demolished by the Wehrmacht, as the soldiers were using it as a target in their gunnery practice. In the summer of 1940, the bodies of several Jewish soldiers killed during the September Campaign were buried by the southern wall of the necropolis.

The long process of devastation of the cemetery began after the war. Many tombstones were stolen and marble epitaph plates were removed from sandstone matzevot. The materials looted from the cemetery were later used by stonemasons. The brick ohel of Lewenberg, a local rabbi, still stood in the cemetery in 1946, but with time it too was pulled down. In 1995–2008, restoration works were carried out at the cemetery on the initiative of pastor Gerhard Voss from Esslingen, with the participation of students from schools in Nuertingen and Esslingen in Germany and from the technical school of construction in Pruszków. The works were financed by the authorities of Pruszków and Esslingen and by the German-Polish Youth Office. The pre-burial house was renovated and the graves of Jewish soldiers killed in September 1939 were marked.

The cemetery is located on a trapezoidal plot covering ca. 0.48 ha (40 × 120 m). The red brick pre-burial house standing at the gate to the necropolis holds one of the few stone tables for ritual ablution (taharah) preserved in Poland. Despite the post-war destruction, a total of 204 tombstones (including 177 full stones) have been preserved at the site. They are arranged in rows and all face west. The tombstones are typical of Jewish sepulchral art from the first decades of the 20th century, made mainly of sandstone and carved in the form of vertical matzevot. There are also several sarcophagi and monuments in the form of a truncated tree; the latter were placed on the graves of people who died at a young age. Individual matzevot commemorate Holocaust victims. The cemetery is a property of the Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw. It is listed in the register of monuments under the number 1339, dated 27 December 1988.

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