News of the Jewish cemetery in Poznań (Poland), another cemetery destroyed by the Nazis

We review the history of the Jewish community of Poznań and evoke in this brief note the unfortunate fate of its destroyed cemetery during the Nazi occupation of Poland. 

by Ricardo Angoso

We found this review about the history of the city's Jews in a travel blog that we reproduce below for its conciseness and ability to synthesize: “The history of the Jews in Poznań dates back to the first days of the city, although, As in so many other cities in central and eastern Europe, this rich heritage was almost completely extinguished in the horrors that followed Hitler's rise to power.

Although the first recorded mention of the Jewish presence dates back to 1364, it is commonly accepted that the first Jewish settlers arrived in the XNUMXth century, when Prince Bolesław the Pious He issued a decree granting protection to the Jews.

As Poznań grew, so did the Jewish population, and by the early 15th century it is estimated that one in four buildings on the Sukiennicza ulica (the de facto center of the Jewish community) was occupied by Jews, a fact that It did not go unnoticed by urban planners, who quickly renamed it 'ulica Żydowska' or 'Jewish street'.

In the 3.000th century, the influx of German burghers and arson marked the decline of Poznań's Jews, although in the early 1736th century the Jewish population of Poznań was around XNUMX, when racial tensions reached their highest point with the infamous XNUMX trial of Rabbi Yossef, accused of ritual slaughter and publicly burned at the stake.”
Source cited and consulted:
https://www.inyourpocket.com/poznan/Jewish-Poznan_73833f

Despite these setbacks and a growing anti-Semitism, especially encouraged from church pulpits, when the city fell under Prussian jurisdiction in the 1803th century, Jews were gradually accepted into the urban “fold.” After the great fire of the city in 1918, they were allowed to live freely in the rest of the city, and thus the ties between Jews and Germans were strengthened. In fact, these relations were so strong that the Jewish community joined the Germans during the Wielkopolska Uprising of 1919-XNUMX, a fact not forgotten by local Poles. 

THE SAD LATE OF THE POLISH JEWS IN HITLERIAN GERMANY

When Poznań was absorbed into the Polish nation in 1919, Jews once again found themselves on the hard side of local sentiments, and significant numbers emigrated west to Germany, where they hoped for greater tolerance. Later, once Hitler came to power, in 1933, these Jewish Poles were unceremoniously expelled by the Nazis in the so-called “Polish Action” organized by the Gestapo and the SS in October 1938; More than 17.000 Jews of Polish origin were arrested to be expelled from Hitler's Germany. 

After being arrested, Polish Jews were stripped of their belongings, businesses and money and put on trains. These trains took the deportees to the border between Germany and Poland. Polish border authorities were initially overwhelmed by the unexpected influx of people and on the first day of expulsions they allowed thousands of Polish Jews into Poland. However, the Polish government quickly responded by closing the border and denying any further access.

Thousands of Poles were left in no man's land, deprived of German residence and Polish nationality, of which they had been stripped by the Warsaw authorities, who did not hide their refusal to allow the return of those expelled by the Germans.
Source consulted: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_expulsion_of_Polish_Jews_from_Germany)

However, amidst so much infamy, there was at least some heroic behavior: in the city of Leipzig, 1.300 Polish Jews were able to find refuge in the Polish consulate, assisted there by Consul General Feliks Chiczewski, who, in an atmosphere of denunciation, police persecution of the Jews and indifference of his bosses in Warsaw, risked his life to help these Jews. undocumented and almost stateless. Thousands more Jews - some sources say 8.000 - tried to find refuge in the town of Zbąszyń, where a large refugee camp was established as an attempt to shelter the deportees. For months, refugees in Zbąszyń slept in poorly built barracks with very few provisions and food and poor sanitary conditions. The severity of the conditions within the camp was witnessed by Polish historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who described the hopelessness of the refugees in a letter to a colleague:

“I don't think any Jewish community has ever suffered an expulsion as cruel and ruthless as this. The future is seen in desperate terms. People in the countryside have received news that they have lost their Polish citizenship […] Zbaszyn has become a symbol of the helplessness of Polish Jews. Jews have been humiliated to the level of lepers, of fourth-class citizens, and as a result, we have all been affected by this terrible tragedy. “Zbaszyn was a severe moral blow to the Jewish population of Poland.”
Source cited and consulted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_expulsion_of_Polish_Jews_from_Germany).

THE OCCUPATION OF POLAND

Like the rest of Poland, Poznan was occupied by the Nazis in September 1939, and very soon the first measures against the Jewish population began, following the brutal traditions already implemented with “success” in Germany and Austria. With World War II looming, Poznań's Jewish population was around 1.500, a figure that would disappear shortly after the city was annexed to the Third Reich in 1939. The city was named the capital of the Reichsgau Wartheland province, and A plan was hatched to rid the city of its Jews within three months. The deportations began on December 11 of that same year, with Jews crammed into cattle cars bound for the Warsaw or Lublin ghettos, and on April 15, 1940, the fascist newspaper Ostdeutscher Beobachter gleefully reported the removal of the Star of David from the last standing synagogue. 

Those who remained in the ghettos of Reichsgau Wartheland, as well as some stripped-down Jews from Austria, Luxembourg and other countries (around 11.000 people in total) were taken to the city's 29 labor camps to perform backbreaking work, including the construction of the Poznań airport and a highway connecting Berlin and Łódź (using Jewish tombstones as construction material), excavating what is now Lake Rusałka and Lake Malta, and liquidating Jewish cemeteries.
Source consulted:
https://www.inyourpocket.com/poznan/Jewish-Poznan_73833f
After the Second World War, Jewish life, along with all its institutions, was completely extinguished, amid the indifference of the new communist authorities and the silence of its Polish neighbors.

THE POZNAN CEMETERY

In 1803 the cemetery was opened on the current Głogowska Street. 26A, and the place suffered the vicissitudes of war after almost a century and a half of activity. During the Second World War, the Nazis destroyed this cemetery, whose tombstones were used to pave the streets and sidewalks or to carry out works in Sołaczu, the German officers' barracks. After the liberation, the destruction continued under the communists when pavilions for the Poznań International Fair were erected here. Today, only a few tombstones remain from the cemetery, which were found in the courtyard of the building at 26A Głogowska Street, where the rabbi and tamudic expert Akiba Eger is buried.
Source consulted:
http://iajgscemetery.org/eastern-europe/poland/poznan).

For many years, the Jewish Committee for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe wanted to build a lapidary in the cemetery, which culminated in December 2006 with an agreement by which the site was located on Głogowska Street. 26 A, would house the stone tombstones as a lapidarium, including those of Akiba Eiger, and work began in autumn 2007. On April 30, 2008, the tombstones were again placed on the edge of this cemetery. Brothers Samuel and Yoshua Haltern, descendants of Akivy Eger, financed the project. The inauguration was also attended by rabbis from around the world and several dignitaries. The rest of the Jewish cemetery was reopened in 2008. In this city, by the way, there were other cemeteries also destroyed before, during and after the Second World War.
Source cited and consulted:
http://iajgscemetery.org/eastern-europe/poland/poznan
Address of the current lapidarium: Głogowska, 26 a

Photos by the author of the note: Poznan Lapidarium

Video of the place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcpW4CWHe2o