Ploty Jewish Cemetery

ESJF surveyors interviewed a 65 years old woman who lives next to the cemetery. She remembers times when the cemetery still existed. She played nearby when she was a girl. She described it as totally destroyed, but that some tombstones were then still visible in the area. She said she did not know what happened to this place later, but remembers when the apartment block was built. She confirmed that a tree-lined avenue (Grabowa Street) was an access road to the Jewish Cemetery.

The Jewish cemetery in Płoty was probably established in the first half of the 19th century, although its earlier existence is not excluded, as already in the 1820s the Jewish inhabitants of the town asked the authorities for permission to hire a gravedigger. They did not obtain consent then and they continued to bury their dead in Stargard, but this attempt proves the activity of this small community – in 1782 it consisted of only 16 people. In the nineteenth century, the number of Jews living in Płoty increased – in the middle of the century there were over 70 Jews here. The second half of the century saw a decline in the kehilla (already 20 years later it had only 35 people). The twentieth century witnessed a further decline in the number of Jews in Płoty, until any trace of them disappeared from the censuses of the town’s inhabitants in 1939.
The cemetery was established on the outskirts of the city, at the end of Königstrasse (now Jana III Sobieskiego Street) along Gartenstrasse (now Ogrodowa Street), at which the entrance to the necropolis was located. The cemetery had a small area of ​​about 0.15 ha and was planted with trees. It was destroyed during World War II. After the war, it fell into oblivion, and in the 1990s a residential building was erected on its premises. Currently, there is no trace of the existence of the cemetery there.
(West Pomeranian Encyclopedia; http://encyklopedia.szczecin.pl)

The Jewish cemetery in Płoty was probably established before 1800 (or around 1846, according to other sources). Such a date can be inferred from the fact that for many years the cemetery also served the local Jewish communities, e.g. the commune of Golczewo (Gülzow) and Gryfice, which established their own cemeteries only after 1812. Previously, those who died from the community were to be transported to Stargard Szczeciński, a day away, where there was a large Jewish cemetery.
The Płoty cemetery was located in the southwestern part of the city at the end of Königstrasse (now Jana III Sobieskiego Street), slightly off the beaten track Gartenstraße (now Ogrodowa Street), east of the grove then called Falkenberghain and south of Kreuzstraße. The entrance to the cemetery was from the side of Gartenstraße. To get to it, you had to pass a small park planted with trees, at the end of which there was a small house called “Herberge” (German “Shelter”). The cemetery itself was located on a hill, and its area was 0.16 ha both before and after the war.
The last known burial took place there in 1940. The cemetery was devastated during the war and no tombstones have survived. Nobody was interested in the neglected area of ​​the former necropolis for a long time, until the end of 1990 and the beginning of 1991 that the whole area was used for the construction of a residential block. Currently, there is no indication that there was once a cemetery in this area.
(sztetl.org.pl)