English translation of an article originally written in polish :
Żydzi z Freiburga na Śląsku (15 marca 2021) by Jacek Ziaja (Świebodzice)
Jews from Freiburg in Silesia This article is a clipped attempt to approach the issue from the perspective and on the example of the fate of one Jewish family (Wolff) from pre-war Freiburg in Silesia. In addition, let the picture shown below be a supplement to the valuable item written by Dr. A. Gruzlewska (
Jews of the Province, 1812-1945) from Dzierżoniów, and at the same time a short genealogical journey into the interesting and not fully recognized history of the local community of the Mosaic faith (Jewish community) and the subsequent fate of its members.
Ad vocem of a letter from Israel to the mayor of Swiebodzice dated August 8, 1998. It all started with the beginning of August 1998. At that time an extremely interesting letter from... Israel arrived at the address of the Świebodzice magistrate. A Polish translation of this letter written in the original, interestingly in German, was published 4 years later in the pages of the monthly magazine
Świebodzice. History of the City in No. 9 (59) of September 2002.
The author of the letter turned out to be Mrs. Ulla (Ursula, Geula) Schkedi [a.k.a. Shkedi], née Wolff, who had been living since 1938, originally in the British Mandate Area of Palestine, and since May 1948 in the newly established Jewish state of Israel. She was born on February 1, 1921 in Świebodzice (Freiburg in Schlesien). It is noteworthy that she was one of the last people born in pre-war Świebodzice of the Jewish faith.
She specifically mentioned in her letter the heavily neglected cemetery, located at 17 Waldenburger Straβe (until 1945 Waldenburger Straβe or Waldenburger Chaussée 17), where her father, a merchant by trade and owner of a small clothing store, Philipp Wolff (born 28 May 1875, died 14 Jan 1938, Freiburg in Schlesien).
Further on, the letter’s author also mentioned her mother (Jenny Sara Wolff, née Pincus or Pinkus), who lived virtually undisturbed in her house at what was then Nikolaistraβe 5 (Mikołaja Street 5) in Świebodzice until 1942, when she was stripped of her property by the German authorities.
The clues left in the 1998 letter made it possible, after more than twenty years, to revive the topic and attempt to make new findings regarding the fate of the Wolff family, members of the local community, as well as the Jewish community, residents of the city before 1945.
Philipp Wolff (1875-1938) The learned and practiced profession of the head of the family was merchant (Kaufmann). Well, the senior Wolff specialized in trade. He ran a small textile and fabric store (women’s, men’s and children’s confections) at Nikolaistraβe 5 (formerly Friedenstraβe, now Nicolaus Copernicus Street 5). The Wolff family lived at the same address, one floor above the store.
All would perhaps have been calm and well, and the whole story probably wouldn’t even have happened, had it not been for the rising tide of social discontent in Germany, and the assumption of the office of chancellor by Austrian corporal (gefrajter), World War I veteran, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in January 1933. A figure that forever changed not so much the course of German history, but that of Europe and the world, which on a micro-scale destroyed the lives and health of many millions of lives, including those of Jews, and did not spare the citizens of the German Reich of the Jewish faith.
Beginning in 1931, the number of Świebodzice Jews began a gradual decline, although the beginning of this phenomenon had its origins even before World War I. The downward trend deepened over the course of the 1930s, to reach, according to the last reliable sta
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
. Gidon SHKEDI, b. 8 Mar 1945, Tiberias, Israel 
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