Description
Despite the significant contribution of the Jewish community to the cultural and economic development of Gubin, currently there are not many traces of it in the public space - those of the four existing ones, i.e. symbolic paving stones, the Jewish cemetery, the sukkah and the stone of the synagogue, are not sufficiently visible there.
The latter is a medium-sized stone with an engraved Star of David, placed on the site of a small synagogue from 1878, destroyed during the Kristallnacht. The boulder was placed next to a sprawling chestnut tree, in the middle of a river circle filled with coarse-grained gravel, to which an alley surrounded by bushes leads from Dąbrowskiego Str. Assemble is integrated into a quiet green area, right next to Lubsza, giving this place a melancholic character. Before entering the path. Thanks to the efforts of the Association of Friends of the Gubińskie Region, an information board was set up.
Historical background
The first official records of the Jewish population in Guben date back to the beginning of the 14th century, when the community was protected by the voivode in this city. Soon after, from 1348-1351, when the pogrom of Jews blamed for the outbreak of the Black Death took place throughout Europe, this number dropped significantly. For the next half a millennium, the Jews of Guben lived mainly in the eastern end of the city, where with time the Jewish Street (Ger.: Juden Str.) was established. Along with the industrial revolution, more and more representatives of the Jewish community began to come to Guben, the number of which began to increase noticeably in 1841. In 1849, a Jewish community was established, including the cities of Żary (German: Sorau), Lubsko (German: Sommerfeld) and Przybrzeg (Ger.: Fürstenberg (Oder)) outside Guben. Built in 1837, the small synagogue was not able to accommodate the dynamically growing number of the faithful. For this reason, in 1878, a small, two-storey synagogue was built at 16 Kastaniengraben (now 26 Dąbrowskiego Str.).
It was no coincidence that the plot of land for the synagogue was chosen: its geographic arrangement made it possible to build the building in such a way that the Aron Kodesh, the so-called the sacred box with the Torah scrolls was placed at the eastern wall, facing Jerusalem and the Temple of Jerusalem. In the center there was a bimah from which the Torah was read; behind the rostrum there were seats. On the first floor there was a rabbi's apartment, a communal religious school and, according to some sources, also a library. The last rabbi in the Guben synagogue was Siegfried Winterberg, who lived at Pfingstberg 26. What exactly the synagogue looked like - it is not known.
On the night of November 9-10, the Nazis set fire to the synagogue and devastated its interior, throwing the Torah onto the street. Along with it, the shops and houses of the Semites were devastated - the people themselves were beaten, tortured, and some were taken to concentration camps under "protection" (Ger.: Schutzhaft). It must be remembered that this pogrom was not an isolated event, but part of the persecution of Jews, the intensification of which began when the Nazis came to power in the early 1930s. At the end of 1939, out of 202 Jews, only 39 were in Guben. Only 2 of them survived. The events of Kristallnacht and the following years of World War II deliberately wiped out a lot of evidence of the existence of the Jewish community in the public space of Guben. There are no photos left of the synagogue. The ruined building was taken over at the end of 1941 by the Missionary Community of the Methodist Church (German: Missionsgemeinde der Methodistenkirche). Four years later, probably during the fights for Guben, the synagogue was destroyed.
On the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht, on November 9, 1998, the inhabitants of Guben and Gubin erected a stone in the place of the synagogue with a small commemorative plaque, integrated into a small park layout.
In 2008, thanks to the efforts of the Association of Friends of the Gubin Region, the so far anonymous monument was supplemented with an information board.
Dąbrowskiego 26, 66-620 Gubin, Poland
Synagogue (commemorative stone)
Synagogue: 1878, partially destroyed on Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938, destroyed between February and April 1945. Completely demolished the same year.
Stone: 09.11.1998
Information board: 2008
The whole area including the path: approximately 50m²
Open 24/7
