The historically important but largely destroyed Jewish cemetery in Słubice, Poland — on the border with Germany outside the German town of Frankfurt an der Oder — has been placed on the provincial historic monuments register, according to reports on Virtual Shtetl and in local media.
The cemetery was first mentioned in 1399, which makes it one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in central Europe. Many rabbis from Frankfurt/Oder were buried there. The last burial took place in 1944. It is currently owned by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ).
The worst devastation of the cemetery came after World War II. As Virtual Shtetl reports:
After the end of the war, the area was administered by the “Warta Tourist” Travel Agency in Gorzów. It was during the Polish People’s Republic that the cemetery suffered the most serious destruction. As a result of which, the pre-burial chapel was dismantled, most headstones were destroyed, and, in the end, the “Gościniec Staropolski” inn was erected there.
A book about the cemetery, in Polish and German, was published in 2012. Called Makom tow – dobre miejsce. O cmentarzu żydowskim we Frankfurcie nad Odrą/Słubicach, it was written by Eckard Reiß, of the Historical Society in Frankfurd an Oder, and edited by Magdalena Abraham-Diefenbach from the Institute of Applied History.
See the history of the cemetery, and some pictures, on Virtual Shtetl