Obj. ID: 51629
Jewish Funerary Art  Jewish cemetery in Kwidzyn, Poland

According to ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, the until 1815, the Jewish community buried its dead in a cemetery in the distant Sztum. It was in this year that Jews obtained permission to establish their cemetery, located at the corner of today’s Grudziądzka and Kościuszki streets.

The last Jewish family to leave Kwidzyn at the beginning of 1939 was the Cohn family.
The location of the Jewish cemetery was known through the pre-war city map. This cemetery was remembered in the city in the late 1970s, when human remains were dug up on the site of more or less today’s memorial plaque during the earthworks on Kościuszko Street.
(http://kwidzynopedia.pl/index.php/Cmentarz_żydowski_przy_ul._Kościuszki_w_Kwidzynie)

On the city plan from 1938, one can still identify a small building in the cemetery. In turn, the census of the inhabitants of Kwidzyn from 1935 states that Konrad Pawlitzki, a cemetery worker, lived at 27, Graudenzer Strasse, in a building owned by the Jewish community in Kwidzyn. This is undoubtedly a trace of the functioning of the cemetery in the 1930s. However, the cemetery was profaned as early as 1935. It was then razed to the ground, and then transferred to one of the schools for a vegetable garden. The official closure took place in 1938.
Until the mid-1990s, there was a playground on the site for a nearby orphanage (which does not exist today).

The cemetery is marked with a plaque and a commemorative stone. Several old trees have been preserved in the necropolis. It is only partly fenced with different types of fence belonging to adjacent properties. There are a couple of concrete borders of the graves; all of these are in poor condition and hidden in thick grass. There are probably no more than seven.

The cemetery is located at the intersection of today's Kościuszki and Grudziądzka streets, between buildings at 29, Grudziądzka Street and 36, Kościuszki Street. It is marked with a plaque (from the side of Grudziądzka Street) and a commemorative stone (from the side of Kościuszko Street). Cadastral parcel no. 220701_1.0011.81/25