First Jewish presence: 1715; peak Jewish population: 190 in 1920; Jewish population in 1933: 37
Although Jews settled in Lyck in the early 1700s, it was not until the 19th century that the community there consecrated a cemetery (1827) and built a synagogue (1859). Lyck was home to a publishing house established by Eliezer Lippman Silberman, who, in addition to printing Jewish and Hebrew books and manuscripts, founded a Hebrewlanguage newspaper that was distributed throughout Europe. Many Jewish books were smuggled from Lyck to Russia, where such material was illegal. In 1930, Lyck’s synagogue was vandalized; in 1932, Jewish-owned businesses were attacked. As a result, the German Zionist Organization set up a local office in Lyck. The organization’s efforts to persuade local Jews to immigrate to Palestine were unsuccessful, however, and most Lyck Jews relocated to larger German cities. On Pogrom Night, SA men set fire to and burned down the synagogue. More than sixty Lyck Jews perished in the Shoah.Moshe Finkel
Copyright: Pogrom Night 1938 - A Memorial to the Destroyed Synagogues of Germany/ germansynagogues.bh.org.il
Notes
Sources: The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust, Shmuel Spector [Ed.], [publisher] Yad Vashem and the New York University Press, 2001., Lexikon der jüdischen Gemeinde in Deutschen Sprachraum, Klaus Dieter-Alicke, [publisher] Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008.
Details
| Date Added | May 20, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Category | Residential |
| Country | PL |
| State | Warmia-Masuria |
| City | Ełk (Lyck) |
| Exhibits | Pogrom Night 1938 - A Memorial to the Destroyed Synagogues of Germany |
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