Obj. ID: 52136
Jewish Funerary Art  Jewish cemetery in Ełk, Poland

According to ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, it is a destroyed, unfenced Jewish cemetery with a preserved fragment of the tombstone (on the west side of the hill). Currently, the cemetery area is a place of rest and recreation, used for walking (also with dogs), cycling, etc. The area is a well-kept meadow, not littered, with trimmed grass, no thickets, covered with a few trees. In the cemetery there is a commemorative stone with a plaque with inscriptions in Polish, German and Hebrew.

The cemetery was established in 1837 in the suburbs near the mountain called “Jerusalemberg”. It was surrounded by a brick wall, which was partially destroyed during the operations in August 1914. At that time, several Russian soldiers of the Mosaic faith were buried there, although, as you can see on one of the occasional war postcards, Christian soldiers - possibly Orthodox - were also buried here. The cemetery was devastated during the "Kristallnacht". Even in the 1960s, its area was overgrown and there were at least a few matzevot and graves there. There was a building nearby - perhaps a funeral home. In the following years, this area was leveled and finally built-up. John Paul II Square was built in its place, which partially covers the area of the former Jewish cemetery. In 2004, the Union of Jewish Communities demanded that a part of the square with an area of approx. 1,800 sq. meters be donated. Until 2016, no claims were brought after a negative response from the municipal commune in Ełk. Memories about the Jewish cemetery can be found in the Oral History Collections of the Historical Museum in Ełk. According to Jarosław Kamiński's information, in the 1960s, fragments of a brick fence were still visible in the cemetery, and inside there were several plaques and tombstones with Hebrew inscriptions that "had already been beaten by the Germans". When the cemetery was later finally liquidated, the adjoining mortuary building was left behind [Szczepański].