Bisztynek Jewish Cemetery
Cemetery Information
Country
Poland
Region
Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship
District
Bartoszyce
Settlement
Bisztynek
Site address
Between Słoneczna and Kwiatowa Streets, next to house at 2 Nowe Osiedle Street, almost in front of the building at 5 Słoneczna Street (currently a "Mini Lewiatan" grocery store), 70 meters South via Słoneczna street from its intersection with Kwiatowa.
GPS coordinates
54.084032, 20.910909
Perimeter length
92 metres
Is the cemetery demolished
yes
Type and height of existing fence
No fence.
Preservation condition
Demolished Jewish cemetery that has not been built over
General site condition
Demolished, partly overbuilt cemetery with no tombstones on it. Currently, the cemetery in Bisztynek is a small mound covered with grass and bushes, decorated with an old, beautiful maple tree. The rest of the cemetery area consists of garden allotments and a fragment of a residential building. There is also a dirt road running through the necropolis. No tombstones have survived. The cemetery is not marked in any form.
Number of existing gravestones
No tombstones preserved.
Date of oldest tombstone
N/A
Date of newest tombstone
N/A
Urgency of erecting a fence
High
Land ownership
Other
Preserved construction on site
No
Drone surveys
No
Historical overview
The Jewish cemetery was established here in 1821 on a plot of two acres (about 0.5 ha), approximately 0.5 km from the city center, at today's Słoneczna Street. Formerly there was a small hill here. The cemetery was surrounded by a wooden fence. Initially, it served a small group of Jews, of whom there were only two families in 1811/1812, in 1834 there were 26 of them in total, and in 1843 - 57 people. In general, in this small town, the number of Jews in the preserved censuses never exceeded 90 people - this is the number of Jews in 1880, which constituted 2.59% of the total population.
Despite the persecution of local Jews during the Nazi period by members and supporters of the NSDAP, the cemetery was not destroyed during Kristallnacht. The end of its operation came in 1942, when it was first officially closed (in fact, in 1939, there were no more Jews here), then the graves on it were collected and the cemetery elevation was completely leveled for the purpose of gardens. It is possible that the remains of people buried in the cemetery were also removed at that time. Currently, there is no trace of the cemetery on this site. In 2014, there was also no information board. The square is driven by cars and partly covered with grass.
(“Żydowskie domy modlitwy oraz cmentarze na Warmii i Mazurach – stan obecny” book by Seweryn Szczepański, 2017; doi.org/10.26774/rzz.165)
