At the beginning of the 17th century, Jews began to settle in Bytom again.

On 6 January 1656, Prince Georg Friedrich cleared the legal status of the Jewish settlement in Bytom and obtained permission for Jews to trade freely in the city. Until the second half of the 18th century, the Jews of Bytom were subordinated to Będzin Municipality.

In the 18th century, many Jews arriving from Poland settled in Bytom. That caused concern among the bourgeoisie due to competition in trade. For this reason, in 1708, Emperor Charles VI issued a decree ordering all Jews not entitled to reside in Silesia to leave the land within four weeks.

As a consequence of the First Silesian War and the Treaty of Breslau signed on 11 June 1742, most of Silesia, including Bytom, became part of the Kingdom of Prussia.

In 1750, there were approximately 50 Jews living in Bytom. By 1784, their number increased to 132 (8% of the total population), while by 1790 it decreased to 115.

In 1809 – 1810, the first free-standing synagogue was erected in Bytom.

The driving force behind the development of the Jewish community was the “Civic Relations Edict” issued by King Frederick William on 11 March 1812. The document, commonly known as the “Emancipation Edict,” introduced a fundamental change in the position of Jews in the Kingdom of Prussia, making them partly equal in legal terms to Christian citizens. At the time the edict was issued, 68 Jewish families lived in Bytom.

In 1846, 922 Jews lived in Bytom (17% of the total population).

On 1847, the Prussian authorities enacted the “Jewish Relations Edict”.

In the autumn of 1867, the old synagogue building was demolished. The construction of a new larger synagogue began in its place, which was ceremonially opened on 2 December 1869.

In 1885, there were 2,290 Jews living in Bytom.

After the end of World War I and the rebirth of the Polish state, the majority of Upper Silesian Jews decisively sided with Germany. As a result of the plebiscite of 20 March 1921, Bytom remained in Germany.

Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933 significantly changed the position of the Jewish population throughout Germany. The main aim of Nazi policy was to eliminate Jews from German society and force them to emigrate. This task was pursued both by administrative and economic means as well as by the use of physical violence. By decision of the Council of the League of Nations in Geneva, legal protection was granted to the Jewish minority in Upper Silesia in accordance with the German–Polish Convention on Upper Silesia of 1922, and the Third Reich was obliged to refrain from taking any action against the Jews there. The expiry of the Convention on 15 July 1937 extended all anti-Semitic laws passed after 1933 in the Third Reich to the area of German Upper Silesia, including the so-called Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze).

In the autumn of 1938, 1,843 German Jews and 270 Jews with foreign citizenship lived in Bytom.

During the so-called Kristallnacht on 9–10 November 1938 in Bytom the synagogue was burnt down and numerous properties belonging to Jews were demolished. In 1939, there were 1,362 Jews living in Bytom.

The outbreak of war in September 1939 intensified the restrictive measures against the Jews in German Upper Silesia. However, they were not subject to isolation from the rest of society, nor did the organisation of their life change. It was not until the spring of 1942 that their deportations to ghettos, transit-camps or directly to extermination camps began. Those deportations continued – on a smaller scale – also in 1943.

After World War II, a large group of Polish Jews settled in Bytom. Numerous organisations were established, uniting that population. From 1950, only the Congregation of the Mosaic Faith (Polish: Kongregacja Wyznania Mojżeszowego) and a branch of the Social and Cultural Society of Jews in Poland (Polish: Towarzystwo Społeczno-Kulturalne Żydów w Polsce) were active in the city. Today, the Jewish community of Bytom is subordinate to the Jewish Religious Community in Katowice.

The Description

The establishment of a new Jewish cemetery in Bytom was influenced above all by the rapid growth of the city and the significant increase in the number of Jewish residents who were followers of Judaism. Due to the rapidly decreasing number of free places in the existing cemetery, the lack of possibilities to enlarge it and the fact that it did not meet appropriate standards, the Jewish community in Bytom decided in 1865 to establish a new burial place.

The cemetery was located in the northern part of the city, in the so-called Piekarskie Suburb, at today's Piekarska Street (ulica Piekarska), opposite the Christian Mater Dolorosa cemetery. It was established on a rectangular plot of approximately 7,600 square metres, which was enclosed by a brick fence. The south-western part of the plot is enclosed by a large square, closed off to the north by a funeral home, to the south by the burial society, together with the caretaker-gardener's flat and a utility zone, and to the west and east by a brick wall with wrought gates on one axis. In front of the buildings on the street side, there are green belts enclosed by a wrought openwork fence.

The founder of the plot, the fence and the funeral home was Doctor of Law Otto Friedländer, who is mentioned on a memorial plaque hanging on the south wall inside the ceremonial hall. They were built in 1866 according to a design prepared by Master Builder Goldstein. The burial society was built slightly later.

The cemetery – in accordance with the prevailing custom – was opened in September 1867, shortly before the start of new year 5628 of the Jewish era. Thanks to the meticulously kept burial register, it is known that the first to be laid to rest there was Miss Handel Münzer, who died on 20 September 1867 at the age of 22.

As it filled up, the cemetery was expanded twice, first in 1883 on the north side by an area of approximately 4,000 square metres, and in the early 1930s by an area of almost 5,000 square metres on the north-east side. Eventually, the cemetery reached an area of 17,700 square metres. Further portions of fencing were built in the years 1894 and 1910.

A total of 3,017 people were buried in the cemetery until mid-November 1940, when further entries in the burial register were discontinued. The last entry – in the second burial register numbered 2199 – is Ludwig Fröhlich, who died on 13 October 1940 in the Dachau concentration camp and his ashes were bought by his family and brought to Bytom for burial. Funerals were regularly held until mid-1942. The last person who was buried as an individual during World War II was probably widow Pauline Dzialoszynski, née Sonnenfeld, who died of natural causes on 2 June 1942 at the age of almost 80.

On 4 July 1939, the necropolis, together with all the property of the Bytom Jewish community, became the property of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Polish: Zrzeszenie Żydów w Niemczech). From 1 June 1943, the necropolis was administered by the city. It remained intact until 1945.

After the end of World War II, the necropolis was placed under the ownership of the Congregation of the Mosaic Faith in Bytom. It is an active cemetery and is used regularly for burials.

Author of the note: Sławomir Pastuszka

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