Alternate names: Prudnik [Pol], Neustadt in Oberschlesien until 1708, Polnisch Neustadt [Ger], Neustadt. 50°19' N, 17°35' E, 59 miles SSE of Wrocław (Breslau), 29 miles SSW of Opole (Oppeln), near the Czech border. 1900 Jewish population: 184 (in 1880), 110 (in 1925). ) This town in the southern part of Opole Voivodeship with a 2005 population of 26,400 is the capital of Prudnik powiat that contains Gmina Biała, Gmina Głogówek, Gmina Prudnik, and Gmina Lubrza. [June 2009]
Wikipedia [Jan 2015]
- Jewish Community in Prudnik on Virtual Shtetl [Jan 2015]
The date of the first Jewish settlement in Prudnik is unknown but by 1534, 25 Jews lived there. In 1540, a Jewish school functioned. In 1535, Dawid and old Kaufman requested on behalf of the kahal to purchase land for the first Jewish cemetery for 40 guilders. The city exiled 28 Jewish families by a privilege granted the city by Emperor Rudolf II . Some moved to nearby Biała. No evidence exists of Jewish residence in Prudnik from 1784-1809. The old Jewish cemetery went unused although Jews returned to Prudnik in the 1820s and developed the textile business. They continued to use the Biała cemetery until a new Jewish cemetery was established in Prudnik in 1860. In 1838, merchant Samuel Frankel founded a textile factory on ul Nyskiej that grew and became famous in European. A modern factory built in 1908 for 4,000 employees had a hospital, modern facilities for workers, and became the power plant in Opole in 1910 and a school in 1928. The factory produced and internationally exported towels, napkins, tablecloths, artificial silk, sheets and bathrobes. Frankel and Pinkus donated many structures to the city as well as the great Jewish synagogue. Max Pinkus, MD, PhD, a famous collector of books, donated his "Silesian Library". The Jewish community in Prudnik was not large. In 1929, 32 Jewish families with 110 people lived their with their own school, chevrah kaddisha, and charities. During Kristallnacht in 1938, the synagogue was burned, the heirs of Samuel Fränkl were forced to turn over the factory to the Nazis and immigrate along with most of the Prudnick Jews. The devastated Fränkl factory is now the company Frotex SA. [June 2009]
CEMETERY:
In addition to the original cemetery, the new one built on ul. Kolejowej 40 was founded in 1860 with a tahara modeled on unique synagogue architecture remains in very good condition. A metal fence surrounds the 0.2 ha cemetery with about 140 gravestones, some in poor condition and the cemetery partially destroyed. However, the Frankel family tomb remains. A monument dedicated to the memory of the town's Jews murdered, prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau, buried in a mass grave in one of the first evacuations to the west of the camp. No care or interest is known for this cemetery. video. [June 2009]
US Commission No. 000531-- The US Commission is not finished rechecking this file. [2000]
burial list [Jan 2015]