It is known that  there was also a Jewish community in the town, from the 13th century onwards, which had its own synagogue; however, its location has not been established to date. The medieval Judengasse was a block of Zamkowa Street,  parallel to Klasztorna and Garbarska streets.  The end of the medieval Jewish community was in 1454,. At that time, Jews were expelled from Ziębice, which was the result of the stay in Wrocław of the preacher and Franciscan Jan Kapistran. Jews did not return to Ziębice until the 1880s.  

The Jewish community in Ziębice has never been very numerous - the largest number of Jews lived in the town in 1849 and it was 249 people.  Over time, the number of Jewish inhabitants of Ziębice began to decrease systematically.  

Before a synagogue was built in the town, the Jewish community rented a facility at the back of the Market Square for religious purposes. In 1845, the Jews of Ziębice asked the king for funds to support the construction of a temple and to organise a money collection in all Jewish municipalities of the monarchy. The consecration of the synagogue took place on 30 October 1845, and the ceremony was attended by members of the Jewish community, as well as city and state officials and officers of the local garrison. The synagogue, built in the English Neo-Gothic style, has survived to the present day - it is now located at  Wąska Street no. 9.

The most well-known Jewish family from Ziębice were the Schottländers, who, even after moving to Wrocław, were involved in the life of the town and were, for example, founders of the town park.

During World War II, the Jews of Ziębice were deported to ghettos and extermination camps, where the transports of German Jews from the Dolnośląskie Province were sent, i.e., to Treblinka, Auschwitz, the ghetto in Terezin and Kowno, Izbica and Riga.

After World War II, a large Jewish community settled down in Ziębice - 2,329 Jews lived there in July 1946, most of whom  emigrated during the post-war five years. The Jews from Ziębice took part in religious, economic, cultural, social and political activities.  

The Description

Initially, Jews from Ziębice were buried in the cemetery in Biała Prudnicka (Zülz). According to Franz Hartmann, Bernhard Brilling and Marcin Wodziński, the Jewish cemetery in Ziębice was established in 1814, when Jewish communities were ordered to create a cemetery for sanitary reasons to avoid transporting corpses to distant places. However, the oldest tombstone, of Abraham Langendorf,  which survived until the early 1990s, comes from 1782 .  It is possible that prior to the establishment of the official community cemetery, a Jewish necropolis, privately owned, existed in the same area.

The burial site located on the premises of the former Crusader headquarters was purchased for 60 thalers. The land purchase agreement was concluded with a man called Prescher on 1 July 1814. As it turned out later on, the property did not belong to Prescher but to the state treasury, so the Jewish community was forced to buy the land again, this time for 500 thalers, and it took place on 28 September 1829.

In 1939, the properties of Jewish communities became the property of the Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland).  In 1943, the association started negotiations with the mayor of Ziębice to purchase the Jewish cemetery in Ziębice. The cemetery property was located outside the town and it covered an area of 21 a and 40 square metres at that time. It included a funeral house and the whole area was surrounded by a wall. In 1940, the value of the cemetery was estimated at RM 2,030 (Reichsmark) but the town mayor wanted to pay RM 250.  After the cemetery was seized by the Gestapo and re-examined, the value of the property was estimated at RM 470, and the purchase agreement for the cemetery  was drawn up on 3 November 1944.  

After World War II, the cemetery was taken over by organisations of Polish Jews who settled down in Ziębice and was used as a burial ground.

The necropolis is located on the slope of a hill near Piaskowa Street, between single-family houses, at the eastern  end of Władysława Łokietka Street (plot no. 73).  Its shape is rectangular, elongated in the east-west direction. It is surrounded by a stone and brick wall, partially demolished on the eastern side. Originally, the entrance to the cemetery led through a Greek revival pre-burial chapel -funeral home (it is destroyed now). The building was financed by the children of Salomon Sachs,  a merchant who died in 1854. This was confirmed by an iron, decorative memorial plaque with an inscription: "Ein Geschenk der Kinder des Seit 1854. Auf diesen Friedhof ruhenden Kaufmann Salomon Sachs” (the plaque did not survive until today). There is an information board (in Polish and English) in front of the funeral home. Currently, the entrance to the chapel is bricked up, and the cemetery can only be accessed from the east, through breaches in the cemetery wall.

According to data from 1987, approximately 130 tombstones have been preserved in the cemetery, including those of the members of the Schottländer family. The layout is marked by alleys and rows of lime trees. The gravestones, mostly from the second half of the 19th century, are located along the main alley.  Many of them are overturned and damaged.   There are also a few post-war gravestones.

In 1984, the Jewish cemetery in Ziębice was entered into the register of monuments under no. A/5185/1024/Wł. In 2000, the Jewish cemetery in Ziębice became the property of the Jewish religious community in Wrocław, and three years later the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage became its owner.  

In the 21st century, cleaning works were carried out in the cemetery several times (including  by young Jews from Poland, Israel and the USA), and then, the responsibility of cleaning the cementary was taken over by the Friends of Ziębice Society “Ducatus” and students of a junior high school -Gimnazjum Publiczne im. Mikołaja Kopernika w Ziębicach.

Author of the note: Tamara Włodarczyk

Bibliography

• Brilling B., Die jüdischen Gemeinden Mittelschlesiens. Entstehung und Geschichte, Stuttgart 1972.
• Hartmann F., Dzieje miasta Ziębice na Śląsku, translation M. Czapliński, Wrocław 1992.
• Myśliński K., Cmentarz żydowski w Ziębicach. Teczka ewidencyjna, Wałbrzych 1987.
• 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. XI).
• Wodziński M., Hebrajskie inskrypcje na Śląsku XIII–XVIII wieku, Wrocław 1996.

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