Heilsberg
General information: First Jewish presence: 1728; peak Jewish population: 164 in 1871; Jewish population in 1933: 34
Summary:
Records do not tell us where the Jews of Heilsberg (presentday
Lidzbark Warmiński, Poland) initially conducted
religious services, but we do know that they eventually
built a synagogue on Fleischerstrasse. The community also
maintained a Jewish cemetery in a nearby forest.
In his memoirs, Carl Rosenberg wrote that Jews and
Christians in Heilsberg lived as one large, happy family.
Towards the end of the 1800s, however, Jews began to leave
Heilsberg; within a few years, the Jewish population was
one-third of what it had once been.
On Pogrom Night, the synagogue interior was ransacked,
after which the building was set on fire; a young Jewish
couple was shot, their corpses thrown into the burning
synagogue. SA men broke into Jewish homes and businesses,
destroyed the interiors, and abused the owners.
By the end of the 1930s, hardly any Jews lived in Heilsberg.
Author / Sources: Moshe Finkel
Sources: EJL, LJG
Sources: EJL, LJG
Located in: east-prussia