|
| |
|
 |
|
When our ancestors lived there, Wreschen was a town in the Posen province of Prussia. Today the town is known as Wrzesnia, Poland. According to Wikipedia, Wrze?nia's had a large Jewish community which is mentioned as one of the congregations which suffered severely during the persecutions of the years 1648–1651. All the early documents were destroyed in the conflagration of 1873, in which the synagogue, an old wooden building, also was burned. From International Jewish Cemetery Project (International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies),
Jewish settlement in Wrzesnia began in the 16th century because in 1579 75 Jews paid tax. Czarniecki soldiers murdered about 100 Jewish families in 1656. A fire in 1873 burned the synagogue. Jewish population: 1905-490 and 1921-151, 2.3%. On September 10, 1939 Germans occupied the city. They destroyed the synagogue in 1940. A French POW camp was there during WWII. The first Jewish cemetery in Wrzesnia was in the 16th century. Another was established in 1868. The only trace is two gravestone fragments stored in the Museum of Children Wrzesnia.
An old Jewish cemetery was located in the center of the city bordered by the Fabryczna, Staszica and Szkolna Streets. It occupied an area of 94.5 acres. At the end of 1924, an agreement was reached between officials and the Jewish community to exchange the old cemetery for a parcel of land located on Strzalkowska highway at E end of town, the present location of the Municipal Cleaning Authority. The Nazis leveled it using the tombstones for hardening the surfaces of roads and streets. A small fraction of archival books may be found in the State Archives in Poznan.
|
|
|
|
