First Jews appeared in the environs of Węgorzewo at the beginning of the subsequent century (earliest records date back to 1720). They were mostly merchants from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth dealing with timber floating and fish trade. Records from 1799 mention a Jewish entrepreneur floating timber down the Węgorapa and the Pregoła. It is believed that two local lakes – Judenberg and Koszelne (properly: Koszerne, “Kosher”) – were named after Polish Jews who were purchasing freshly caught fish at Mamry Lake.

It is believed that the first Jew to permanently settle in Węgorzewo was merchant Moses Süßel Aronhold (1783–1853), originally from Człopa in northern Greater Poland (he arrived in the town in 1813, after the adoption of the Edict of Tolerance granting Jews almost full equality in the Prussian state). Five years later, he was probably joined by his brother Jakob Süßel Aronhold, also a merchant, and then by shochet Moses Simon Kohn (Cohn; died in 1845) from Jastrowie. Most Jews settling in Węgorzewo hailed from the borderlands of Greater Poland and Western Pomerania. They traded in canvas, textiles, footwear, clothing, horses; there were also some Jewish distillers and dentists.

Members of the Jewish community in Węgorzewo were quickly integrating with the majority German population – for example by joining in the local choir performing in the Evangelical church. Apart from religious customs, the lifestyle of local Jews practically did not differ from that of their German neighbours. By the 20th century, hardly any Jewish children were given traditional names deriving from the Old Testament. The Jewish residents of Węgorzewo fought on the battlefields and in the trenches of World War I in the ranks of the German army.

The community reached its peak size at the turn of the 1890s. At that time, ca. 60 Jews lived in Węgorzewo (1.5% of the total population). One of the town’s most impressive landmarks was the tenement housing the textile store owned by Eduard Jaruslawsky, located at the corner of the erstwhile Old Market (Polish: Stary Rynek) and Królewiecka Street. After Jaruslawsky’s death, his successor continued to use the name of the old owner to promote the shop, since it was seen as a guarantee of high quality. Węgorzewo was the birthplace of prominent mathematician and physicist Siegfried Heinrich Aronhold (1819–1884), who later went on to work in Königsberg and Berlin. He made great contributions to the development of science, and Aronhold’s symbolic method or linear partial differential equations still remain in use in mathematics.

In 1932, only 42 Jews lived in the town (0.5% of all 7,840 inhabitants). The Jewish community owned a cemetery and a ritual slaughterhouse. No information has been preserved on the existence of a synagogue or religious education facilities (the local Jews prayed in private houses and attended the synagogue in present-day Kętrzyn). The community started to suffer from ever more prominent physical expressions of intolerance and persecutions after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Many Jewish citizens of Węgorzewo decided to emigrate outside Germany (the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, New Zealand; some of them later moved to Israel) or to big German cities (usually to Berlin). Nonetheless, the town still had 16 Jewish residents in 1939. Those who did not manage to safely migrate abroad were deported and murdered in death camps and ghettos in the areas occupied by the Third Reich. Among the people murdered in Auschwitz there were also some Jews of Węgorzewo who had fled the country before the war, seeking refuge in the seemingly safe Netherlands or France. A total of ca. 30 people associated with Węgorzewo died in the Holocaust. The following families survived the extermination: Arschinowitz, Friedmann, Karich, Katzky, Lehmann, Levy, and Radinowski. No Jews returned to Węgorzewo after the war.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Węgorzewo occupies a plot of land between the building at 8 Szkolna Street and the block of flats at 10 Gen. Józefa Bema Street (registration number 439). It was established in the 19th century in the area of the Amtskrug nature reserve, at the site of former cremation grounds of the Bogaczewo culture (identified with the Prussian Galindian tribe), discovered in the 18th century and dating back to the Roman Iron Age. As late as in 1927, several 1,500-years-old Urnfield graves were discovered on the premises of the necropolis.

The area of the cemetery (covering 800 square metres) used to hold around a dozen vertical matzevot facing today’s Zamkowa Street. The site survived World War II unscathed, but it fell into neglect in the post-war years, unfenced and overgrown with shrubs. Sadly, the cemetery met its end with the development of a housing estate in its vicinity. It was levelled in 1972 or 1973 during the construction of nearby blocks of flats. The matzevot remaining on the cemetery grounds were most likely covered with soil. Today, a group of old trees marks the site of the necropolis. In the early 21st century, a terrazzo gravestone placed on the grave of Sara Arschinowitz (1881–1917) and adorned with an inscription in German was recorded at the site. However, it was not found during the field inspection carried out in 2020. Another surviving matzeva from the cemetery (Hirsch Gotthilf, 1803–1860), made of red sandstone, has been restored and partially reconstructed. It is currently stored in the Folk Culture Museum in Węgorzewo (Polish: Muzeum Kultury Ludowej w Węgorzewie).

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