The designer of the spatial arrangement, the gate, the house of prayer and the funeral home was the architect Paul Ehrlich, and the greenery in the cemetery was designed by the director of city gardening - Hugo Richter. The necropolis could be accessed via a gate with two Romanesque pillars. On its western side, there was a funeral home with a prayer house, and a two-story administration building on the eastern side. On the ground floor, there were a flower shop, a gardener's apartment and an office, there was an apartment of a cemetery inspector on the first floor, and on the second floor - an apartment of a gravedigger.

The Description

Around 1918, it was decided to allocate a place in the cemetery for soldiers killed on various fronts of the First World War. Originally, it was supposed to be an honorary cemetery; however, with time, it became a place commemorating all Jews from Wrocław who died during the war. The plot was located at the end of the main alley leading from the gate, and its designer was Paul Ehrlich. In its central part, there was a statue of soldiers - tholos, and 8 plaques were placed on its walls, on which 432 names of officers, non-commissioned officers and ordinary troopers were engraved. The ceremonial opening of the honorary cemetery took place on 29 August 1920.

Probably in the first half of the 1920s, an urn field  was created in the cemetery, and the first funeral took place in 1925. In total, dozens of burials were carried out there.

By 1945, many outstanding members of the Jewish community of the then Wrocław were buried in the cemetery at Lotnicza Street, e.g., historians Jacob Caro and Ezekiel Zivier; a poet, essayist and publisher - Carl Bibersfeld; a rabbi, historian and archivist of the Jewish community in Wrocław - Aron Heppner; a philosopher - Jacob Freudenthal, a painter, graphic artist and architect - Heinrich Tischler and a dramatic tenor and synagogue cantor - Selmar Cerini.

By 1943, the property was owned by the synagogue community of Wrocław, and after being taken over by the Gestapo, it was managed by the Wrocław-North Tax Office. At the time, its area of the cemetery was 11 ha 19 a and 27 sq m. In 1943, a hospital unit was set up in the upper part of the administrative building to serve a few Jewish families that remained in Wrocław and the so-called  mischlings (people from mixed marriages). During the Second World War, the cemetery was also used to bury prisoners of the transit camp for Lower Silesian Jews in Rybna, as well as of the Wrocław branches of the Gross-Rosen camp. This war section is located on the east-west alley, close to the northern border. To this day, it has not been marked in any way.

In August 1944, part of the cemetery, an area of 18,000 square metres, was handed over free of charge to the Wehrmacht cemetery headquarters for burial purposes. A so-called "cemetery of heroes" was established there, and  approximately 2,500 people, mainly German soldiers who died in the field hospital, were buried there in 24 mass graves in January and February 1945. After the Second World War, that part of the Jewish cemetery was used as a secondary burial site for victims of Festung Breslau (soldiers and civilians), exhumed from makeshift graves within the city. In 1999 and 2011, the remains of over 5,600 people were exhumed and transferred to the cemetery in Nadolice Wielkie.      

After 1945, the Jewish cemetery at Lotnicza Street was taken over by the Jewish Religious Association in Wrocław, which used it for burial purposes. During that period, the pre-war part of the necropolis was devastated and only approximately 10% of several thousand tombstones survived, mainly in the cemetery wall. In the post-war part of the cemetery, distinguished members of the Jewish community and people who played an important role in the cultural life of Wrocław (including Jakub Rotbaum) are buried.

In the 1970s, on the initiative of the authorities at that time, the management building and the prayer house were demolished. Only the funeral home has survived until now, as well as the rooms for preparing corpses before burial, a boiler room and a water supply system. Today, the building is in a very bad technical condition.

In 1996, the Jewish religious community of Wrocław became the owner of the necropolis. It is still the burial place of Jews living in Wrocław and Lower Silesia.  Currently, it is one of the three active Jewish cemeteries in the Dolnośląskie Province. Since 2009, it has been systematically cleaned up and the tombstones are renovated by the Jewish community workers in Wroclaw. In 2012, on the initiative of the association of former residents of Wrocław in Israel, a plaque commemorating 21 German Jews - the last members of the Jewish community who were buried there in the years 1943-1944 - was placed at the main gate of the cemetery.

In 2018, human remains excavated during archaeological research carried out at the Jewish cemetery on Gwarna Street were buried in a common grave at the necropolis. At that time, more than a dozen fragments of matzevot were also found, which were moved to the cemetery on  Lotnicza Street.

In 1983, the cemetery was entered in the register of historical monuments under the number A/2653/428/Wm. It currently covers plot AR 9 no. 2.

Author of the note: Tamara Włodarczyk

Bibliography

• Burak M., Okólska H., Cmentarze dawnego Wrocławia, Wrocław 2007.
• Połomski F., Zawłaszczenie i sprzedaż cmentarzy żydowskich w latach II wojny światowej na Śląsku. Ze studiów nad prawem własności w III Rzeszy, “Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis”, No. 815 (Studia nad Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi, vol. XI).
• Trzaskowska G., Cmentarze wojenne we Wrocławiu w latach 1939–2002, Wrocław 2008.
• Włodarczyk T., Kichler J., Przewodnik po żydowskim Wrocławiu, Wrocław 2019.
• Ziątkowski L., Dzieje Żydów we Wrocławiu, Wrocław 2000.

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