Szczecinek Jewish Cemetery
Cemetery Information
Historical overview
Probably the Jewish cemetery was established in Szczecinek in the first half of the 18th century, because at that time a gravedigger worked here, although the community was not numerous – it consisted of about 30 people. The Jewish cemetery was established in the northern part of the city, on the St. Jürgensberg (in the vicinity of today’s Wodociągowa Street). The necropolis, occupying about 0.25 ha. belonged to one of the largest Jewish communities in Pomerania – it had 39 people in 1800, 129 in 1831, 233 in 1849, 409 in 1871, as many as 450 in 1893. Jews from Koszalin, Sławno, Polanów and Darłowo, where the cemeteries were established much later, were also buried in the Szczecin necropolis. In 1862, the commune converted the farm building next to the cemetery into a funeral home. It was a small, simple, one-storey building. In the 1930s, the cemetery was devastated, and at the turn of 1943/44, Soviet prisoners of war in Szczecinek received an order to transform the matzevot into paving stones, which were laid on the sidewalks next to the city school. After the war, the cemetery was reduced to approx. 0.15 ha, and in 1950, the area of the destroyed necropolis was razed to the ground. Currently, the area where the cemetery is located is unfenced and unmarked, the only trace of its existence is the matzevah from 1756 located in the Regional Museum in Szczecinek.
(West Pomeranian Encyclopedia; http://encyklopedia.szczecin.pl)
The 1756 matzevah in the Regional Museum of Szczecinek (source: sztetl.org.pl):
The extended history of St. Jerzy Hill (St. Jürgensberg), also called “Waterworks Hill” or “The Hill of Barns”:
https://szczecinek.com/artykul/wzgorze-sw-jerzego/555952
The history of the Jewish community in Szczecinek:
