Monument to the Goldap Jews

kamień pamiątkowy pamięci członków wspólnoty żydowskiej

In 2001, a monument was dedicated in the small town of Gołdap (German: Goldap), located in the south of what was once German East Prussia, on the former site of the town's synagogue. The monument commemorates the annihilated Jewish community of Goldap and the victims of the National Socialist regime.

History

The district town of Goldap, which prior to 1945 was located in the east of German East Prussia, lies on the edge of Masuria and the Rominter Heath. Today, it is the border town between Poland and the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast. At the end of the 19th century, Goldap, with a total population of 7,200, was home to only 80 Jews; in 1932/1933, only 48 remained, while at the beginning of the war in 1939, there were merely 19 Jews left in the town, which by then had grown to a total population of 11,500. There were two Jewish cemeteries, one prayer room on the market square - in the Jahnke courtyard - and a synagogue on the corner of Schulstrasse and Töpferstrasse. Apart from that, little is known about Jewish life in Goldap.
Following the National Socialist rise to power, Jews in Goldap were increasingly excluded from society and persecuted, as in all of Germany. In the night of November 9/10, 1938, during the so-called »Kristallnacht«, most likely members of the SA looted Jewish shops in Goldap and set fire to the synagogue, which was completely burned down. One can only speculate as to what subsequently happened to the Goldap Jews: Some may have been able to flee abroad, while others were deported by the SS and murdered. There were two large transports from East Prussia: one at the end of June 1942 bound for the Maly Trostenets extermination camp, one at the end of August 1942 headed for Theresienstadt. The transports carried Jewish men, women and children from all three police departments in the area, possibly also from Goldap. The municipal telephone directory for 1942 didn't list any Jewish families. In late autumn 1944, the Red Army took Goldap. The town was retaken by the German Wehrmacht after intense fighting, during which large parts of Goldap were destroyed. In early 1945, Soviet troops occupied Goldap anew. In mid-1945, southern East Prussia, including Goldap, became part of Poland. The few Germans who had remained or returned to their home town were expelled and Poles settled in their place. Thus ended the 400-year long history of German Goldap and began the history of Polish Gołdap.

Goldap, undated, Aerial view of the town square - the location of the synagogue is marked, Kreisgemeinschaft Goldap e. V.

Gołdap, 2009, The old Jewish cemetery in ul. Cmentarna, Stiftung Denkmal

Victims

Close to nothing is known of the fate of the Jews of Goldap. Most of the Jewish residents who still remained in Goldap in 1939 have most probably been murdered by the National Socialists by 1942.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

In 1992, the German Kreisgemeinschaft Goldap Ostpreussen association erected a memorial stone on the municipal cemetery with the following inscription: »In memory of the 16 generations of German citizens who lived and worked in the Goldap district«. In the own words of representatives of the association, this dedication includes the town's former Jewish residents. Nearly a decade later, on July 30, 2001, a monument was dedicated on the former location of the synagogue. The project had been initiated by Goldap native Karl-Heinz Hohmann, who had made contacts in Israel, and was seen through by the Polish town and district council as well as the German Goldap association. Stephan Grigat, a representative of the German Goldap association, held a speech during a commemorative ceremony in 2001 which was attended by the Polish mayor, stating clearly that: »This monument commemorates the German victims of German perpetrators in a town that was once German, that was German at the time of the crime. Not one of these perpetrators had been able to imagine that they would in only six years share the fate of the synagogue.« A granite memorial plaque bears the following inscription in Polish, Hebrew, English and German: »In memory of the members of the Jewish community of Goldap, victims of the National Socialist regime in 1933-1945. The obelisk was set up on the location of the synagogue, which was burned down by the National Socialists on Kristallnacht on November 9/10.« No photos remain of the former synagogue of Goldap.

Gołdap, 2009, The 1992 memorial to the former German residents of Goldap, including the Jewish citizens, Stiftung Denkmal

Gołdap, 2009, Monument bearing an inscription in four languages on the former location of the synagogue, Stiftung Denkmal

Open

The monument is accessible at all times.

Contact

Ecke ul. Szolna / ul. Armii Krajowej

Gołdap, 2009, Monument on the former location of the synagogue, Stiftung Denkmal

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