Jewish cemetery (Żory)

50.053055555556 18.706388888889Coordinates: 50 ° 3 ′ 11 ″ N , 18 ° 42 ′ 23 ″ E

Jewish cemetery in Żory

The Jewish cemetery Żory is a Jewish cemetery on the eastern edge of the independent southern Polish city of Żory (German Sohrau ) in the Silesian Voivodeship .

history

There are records of Jews in Sohrau since the 16th century . The number of Jewish residents reached a considerable size as early as the 18th century, and the Jewish community peaked in numbers in the 1840s with more than 500 members. In 1807 the old wooden synagogue was destroyed in a city fire and almost 30 years later a massive new building was built, which was enlarged in the 1860s.

graveyard

First, the dead were buried in the nearby village of Nikolai . A separate burial site was created in 1814 on the outskirts of the Klischczowka community. This place was about two kilometers northeast of the city center of Sohrau on an arterial road.

The attached map from 1884 shows the ethnic and social conditions in this Upper Silesian town in the Prussian district of Rybnik well before 1900. The Prussian city administration allowed the construction of a shooting range on the neighboring property to the east. At this point in time, however, a Reich law on the respect for the peace of the dead was already in force, which would have deprived any basis of such building permits.

In 1837 a mortuary ( tahara house ) was built on the Jewish cemetery. The building was destroyed in the last days of the war in 1945. In 1846 there were 542 people of the Jewish faith living in the city area, which was already 13.5% of the population. The last funeral took place in the cemetery in 1936.

literature

Żory. In: Klaus-Dieter Alicke: Lexicon of the Jewish communities in the German-speaking area. Volume 3: Ochtrup - Zwittau. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2008, ISBN 978-3-579-08079-6 ( online version ).

Web links

Commons : Jewish Cemetery (Żory) - Collection of images, videos and audio files

TK25 sheet 5978 Sohrau - edition 1884
On the history of the Jewish community in Sohrau (Polish text)