Polski
Cesky
The Jewish community from Wodzisław Śl. and the surrounding area from the seventeenth century buried their dead in the cemetery in Mikołów. The Jewish community established its own cemetery in May 1814 on a hill still called Żydziówna today, about half a kilometer from the city center. In 1888, a pre-burial house was built. A total of about 500 people were buried in the cemetery. Among them were deceased members of Wodzisław families Aufrecht, Cohn, Adler, Katz, and others. The names of the first burials are not known because the deaths of residents of the Jewish faith were documented from 1826. The last burial took place in May 1933. As a result of the almost complete disappearance of the local Jewish community after 1922, the Jewish community in Wodzisław was dissolved by order of the Silesian voivode, and the cemetery was transferred to the Jewish community in Rybnik. Lack of proper care, deliberate acts of vandalism in 1923, extraction of sand from part of the cemetery, bombing of the city in late February and early March 1945, and detonation of unexploded ordnance transported from areas of the city in the years 1945-1947, thefts, and removal of tombstones completed the destruction. In 1949, the authorities designated the site after the Jewish cemetery for a cemetery of Soviet soldiers. The remains of Red Army soldiers were buried there as early as 1947. In the years 1954-1961, a general reconstruction of the cemetery was carried out, and the remains excavated during the work were thrown into an unmarked pit at the entrance. From the former cemetery, only narrow stone steps leading to one of the side gates remained. The museum collection contains several fragments of tombstones excavated during earthworks in the city.
