Prostki Jewish Cemetery

Jews have been listed in Prostki since the 19th century. In Małe Prostki their presence was recorded in 1843, when two families of 12 lived there. One of the local Jews - Joseph Wolff - ran an inn. The Jews who originally lived in Prostki belonged to the synagogue community in Ełk. After building their own house of prayer in 1873 and sending a supplication to the Ełk Landratura in 1879 for permission to establish an independent community, they received a negative answer. In 1905, 82 Jews lived in the town. During the Weimar Republic, it housed a registration office for traveling Jewish merchants coming from the East, as well as a hotel and restaurant run by Hermann Berlowitz. In the year the Nazis took power, about 56 Jews lived in Prostki. The Jewish inhabitants of Prostki also had their own cemetery. Initially, they buried their dead in Ełk, but after the construction of the synagogue, they started using their own necropolis - the first mention of the local Jewish cemetery comes from 1874. On the basis of the 1:25,000 plan from 1938, it can be concluded that the cemetery was located about 430 m east of the Ełk River, counting from the place where the water channel leading to Prostki ran, directly at the 120.4 m high elevation, near the intersection of forest paths. Today, the necropolis is covered with forest. (“Żydowskie domy modlitwy oraz cmentarze na Warmii i Mazurach – stan obecny” book by Seweryn Szczepański, 2017; doi.org/10.26774/rzz.165)