On several dozen preserved matzevot there are inscriptions in Hebrew and German, and on decoratively topped matzevot the inscriptions are accompanied by symbols characteristic of Judaism. The cemetery in Wołczyn, located by the road to Brzezinki village, functioned from 1833 and the last known burial took place in 1913.

History of the structure

The history of Jews in Wołczyn starts in the middle of the 18th century. In 1787,

87 Jews lived in the town. In the following decades the number of Jews in the town was increasing and in the middle of the 19th century it reached 216 people. They constituted several percent of the town’s population. Even at the beginning of the 1930s, they were significant residents of the town - there were 80 Jews, constituting 2.2% of the total population. But already in 1942 only 7 people of Jewish origin were registered. As the number of Jews in Wołczyn increased in the 19th century, the community began to make efforts to have its own cemetery and synagogue. From 1833 the community had its own cemetery, which was located by the northern border of the town, by the road to Byczyna. A pre-burial house was built there. In 1853 a synagogue was built in the town (today Kościelna St.), and in 1875 a Jewish school was established. The Jewish community in Wołczyn started to lose its importance at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. At that time many Jews emigrated to bigger cities. The last known burial in the Wołczyn cemetery took place in 1913. And probably since then the necropolis began to fall into oblivion. Emigration of the Jewish population from the beginning of the 20th century, more and more frequent anti-Semitic excesses in Wołczyn in the 1930s, including the “Kristallnacht”, taking over of the cemetery by the Association of Jews in Germany in 1939 and then in 1943 by the Gestapo, led to a great degradation of the necropolis. At that time, the original fence and pre-burial house were destroyed, as well as some of the burials. The cemetery was probably damaged further in the post-war years, when stone matzevot were treated as building material.

The boundaries of the cemetery are legible. In 1984, probably on the foundations of the original fence, a contemporary fence was erected in the form of spans - openwork concrete slabs connected with concrete posts together with a metal gate and a wicket between brick, plastered posts. In the following years degradation of the cemetery area progressed: corrosion of fence panels, overgrowth of trees, the graves were covered with bushes, devastation of matzevot and burials. In 2004 the cemetery was cleared and surrounded by a new fence modelled on the original one. In May and June 2008 the students of the Public Lower Secondary School in Wołczyn cleaned up the necropolis and in December of the same year a memorial plaque was unveiled, commemorating the Jewish residents of Wołczyn and the vicinity resting there.

Description of the structure

The Jewish cemetery in Wołczyn, located 1.5 km north of the town, is situated on a vast elevation over the Wołczyn stream valley, on the southern side of the road leading to Byczyna, near the border between Wołczyn (Konstadt) and the village of Brzezinki (Bürgsdorf). It currently occupies an area of 0.2 ha (land plot no. 798).

The cemetery was originally surrounded by a fence made of spans (metal or wooden) attached to brick posts, with an entrance from the northern side (relics of the old fence were found). The graves are grouped in the western side of the cemetery. The burial house was probably situated in the eastern part. The first post-war fence was probably built in the 1970s-80, in the form of spans - openwork concrete slabs connected with concrete posts together with a metal gate and wicket between brick, plastered posts. The existing fence was erected in 2004. It is a contemporary fence: a circumferential low brick wall with brick posts connected by metal spans made of steel flat bar. In the 1980s the cemetery, although fenced, was neglected: lush vegetation overgrew the graves and matzevot making it impossible to document the layout of the cemetery. It was not until 2004 that it was cleaned up and the fence and entrance gate were rebuilt: metalwork images of the menorah were placed on both wings of the gate. The next cleaning was done in spring 2008, and on 1 December 2008 a granite plaque commemorating the cemetery was unveiled. This monument has a shape of matzevah with inscriptions in Polish and German: Shalom - Peace- Frieden. In memory of the buried Jewish inhabitants of Wołczyn, the surrounding area and those who were forbidden to rest. It is located in the central part of the cemetery opposite the entrance gate.

The area of the cemetery is overgrown with several dozens of trees (about 50-100 years old): lindens, hornbeams, chestnuts, locust tress, lilacs and bird cherries. Graves and matzevot are hidden among vegetation: self-sowing maples and lilacs, and overgrown with ivy, periwinkle, grass, and ferns.

Grouped in the western section, the graves are arranged in several rows running along the NE-SW axis, and the burials along the north-south axis. On the basis of the existing grave frames and matzevot bases, which are mostly overgrown with ivy and lilac, as well as young shoots of maples and lilacs, forming a picturesque carpet of plants, a site visit conducted in 2018 indicated that there may be approximately 100 burials in the cemetery. Some of the graves have collapsed. About 40 standing matzevot have been preserved in the cemetery, in whole or in large fragments. Most of the preserved matzevot were made of sandstone and limestone. There are also granite ones. The tombstone epigraphy evokes the memory of the large Jewish community living in Wołczyn at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The inscriptions (legible) in Hebrew and German have been preserved on the matzevot (on a dozen or so on both sides of the tombstone). On the decoratively topped matzevot the inscriptions are accompanied by symbols characteristic of Judaism (including the Star of David, a bouquet of flowers, the sun, a broken tree, and others). Among the vegetation, numerous scattered fragments of destroyed matzevot, grave frames, and matzevah pedestals are visible.

The object needs to be marked with an information board (at the cemetery gate) and a signpost from the village borders. It is also necessary to immediately take care of the vegetation: removing bushes and sanitary pruning of trees, as well as tidying up the burials, because the work so far was limited only to trimming vegetation. The vegetation should be cut systematically.

A professional inventory of graves and matzevot (reading the inscriptions) and their conservation is necessary (because the surface of the stone, especially sandstone and limestone, corrodes), as well as research related to the layout of the cemetery (including the burial house).

Visitor access: the monument is open to the public.

Author: Krzysztof Spychała, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Opole, 26.07.2018

Bibliography

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• Burchard P., Pamiątki i zabytki kultury żydowskiej w Polsce, Warsaw 1990, p. 198;
• Wodziński M., Hebrajskie inskrypcje na Śląsku XIII–XVIII wieku, Wrocław 1996, p. 61;
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