Alternate names: Lębork [Pol], Lauenburg in Pommern [Ger], Lauenburg, Lembork, Lãbòrg. 54°33' N, 17°45' E, In NW Poland (Middle Pomerania), 39 miles NW of Gdańsk. Jewish population: 381 (in 1871), 239 (in 1933). Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego (1880-1902), V, pp. 198-199: "Lębork". Lębork is a town on the Łeba and Okalica rivers in Middle Pomerania region, NW Poland with 37,000 inhabitants and is also the capital of Lębork County in Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999, formerly in Słupsk Voivodeship (1975-1998). During WWII, Lauenburg was the location of the Nazi concentration camp Lauenburg, a subcamp of the Stutthof concentration camp. The Soviet Red Army occupied the city without fighting on March 10, 1945. Most of the Altstadt burnt in a fire. [May 2009]
Old Cemetery: The oldest was on the present Chrobrego Park. The old cemetery still has traces of the graves.
New Cemetery: Another cemetery was established in the early 20th century at the present ul. Krzywoustego. The cemetery was fenced with a low wall at the entrance and had a caretaker and a mortuary building. The Nazis destroyed the cemetery in 1938. In the 1960s cemetery tombstones fragments on ul. Krzywoustego was removed on the instructions of the local authorities to take everything. At the site, an official of the District and Municipal Economy Companies had two tractor-trailers to extract overgrown vegetation and mostly buried, but visible gravestone borders and stone gravestones. All that could be easily demolished has loaded and removed. Among the items taken were six or seven slightly damaged matzevot. Their destination is unknown, but some gravestones were used for stairs at the stadium and curbstones on ulica Sportowej. In the 1990s, the cemetery land was sold to Statoil group. In August 1998, workers building a service station found human bones and matzevot fragments and informed of the police and the conservator of historic buildings and the Union of Jewish Religious Communities. For several years, a dispute over the fate of the cemetery involved the Defense Committee of the Jewish cemeteries in Europe, threatening to organize a boycott of all the Statoil stations in Europe. Finally, the petrol station remained in its place. Cemetery inscription: "They lived on the land, went to eternity, their memory remains Lębork .. Jews in their place of rest. Lębork Society, Jewish Community." Photos [May 2009]
Statoil, the Norwegian National Oil Company, owns the petrol station whose access road to this petrol station crosses the Jewish cemetery, where all the gravestones have been removed, some in the Nazi era, and the rest in the 1970's. Arieh Klein developed a solution to rebuild the access road, with a steel structure providing an 'air-gap', so that it will satisfy the demands of Jewish Halachic law. [June 2009]