A synagogue was erected in the square surrounded by houses, and was accessed through a passage gate of one of the houses. In 1520, after a fire in the town and under the threat of the townspeople leaving, King Zygmunt I the Old expelled the Jews from Miedzyrzecz.

They returned when the townspeople reneged on their pledge to take over Jewish taxes. They were already mentioned in the privilege of the Margrave of Brandenburg of 1532 and the inspection of the Międzyrzecz property in the years 1564-1565. In 1607 and 1613, the Jews were expelled again. Each time they returned, and in 1633, King Władysław IV permitted them to rebuild the synagogue and granted them numerous privileges, which became the cause of another dispute with the townspeople. During the Swedish Invasion in 1656, due to false accusations of favouring the Swedes, Hetman Czarniecki's soldiers murdered about 100 families. The Jewish community ceased to exist for some time.

As a result of the Second Partition of Poland (1793), Międzyrzecz came under Prussian rule. The census showed that 700 of the 2,510 inhabitants were Jewish. A great fire in 1824 engulfed the eastern part of the town, including the Jewish quarter and the synagogue. A new synagogue was built two years later and existed to this day. It was set on fire during the Kristallnacht. This was, however, rather a symbolic act, as the Germans had already converted the building into a warehouse. After the war, the State Treasury took over and has now been converted into a shop. The synagogue has been listed in the register of historical monuments since 1976.

After the Jews were given full citizenship rights, migration to the larger cities in western Prussia began. In 1842, there were 1,190 Jews in Miedzyrzecz; it was a record number. Shortly before World War I, the community was already ten times smaller. German-Jewish relations were reasonably good until the onset of the Great Economic Crisis (1929-1933) and the rise of the Nazis to power. Jews, 105 in 1933, out of a total population of 7,158 people, began to be held responsible for the difficult economic situation, leading to riots and arrests. During the "Kristallnacht" (9-10 November 1938), the SA demolished Jewish houses and shops, and men were imprisoned in the town hall basement. The last Jews lived in Miedzyrzecz until 1942, when they were arrested and deported to ghettos and camps.

The Description

Within the administrative borders of today's Miedzyrzecz, on the site of the present-day Hospital for the Nervously and Mentally Ill in Obrzyce, there was a significant German hospital complex, the 4th Posener Provinzial-Irrenanstalt Meseritz-Obrawalde. Jews were also treated here. Until the Nazi era, they had their prayer room in the administration building. The hospital complex included a cemetery divided into religious quarters. The Jewish quarters were located north of the Protestant and Catholic sections. Jewish patients were buried there, and as late as the 1960s, single tombstones were found there. In the summer of 1942, at the Meseritz-Obrawalde site, the Germans began killing patients as part of Aktion T4 and continued the crime until January 1945. There were also Jews among the murdered. In November 2004, a memorial was unveiled in the Obrzyce cemetery area in memory of the murdered hospital patients. The monument's symbolism also refers to Judaism and commemorates the Jewish victims who lost their lives in Obrzyce during World War II.

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