The Jewish cemetery in Sosnowiec was established in 1892. Initially it was a cemetery for victims of cholera.

The cemetery was built on an elongated rectangular plan, with an entrance gate and the funeral home located on the side of the currently called Gospodarcza Street.

During the Second World War, the cemetery was partially devastated. As one of the members of the local Jewish community claims, the greatest damages were done in the years of the Polish People's Republic. Some of the tombstones were torn out and used for strengthening of one of the streets - flooded with asphalt, they remain there to this day. The matzevot were also disappearing due to a dishonest cemetery caretaker who illegally sold marble and sandstone slabs to stone workshops. As a result of these activities, at the edges of the cemetery one can see huge shortages of tombstones.

The Jewish cemetery in Sosnowiec is a necropolis typical of large-city Jewish communities - this is reflected in the richness of tombstone forms, which are a stony record of the diversity of the Jewish communities I Poland during the pre-war period, both in terms of customs and their financial situation. In addition to traditional matzevot, we find tombstones in the form of obelisks, felled trees and stately mausoleums. The matzevot made of commonly used sandstone, concrete or terrazzo are neighbouring monuments made of marble, granite and other stones. Also inscriptions in Hebrew - the holy language of the Jews, used on matzevot for hundreds of years - often give way to epitaphs in Polish or German. The gravestones of the deceased in recent decades practically do not differ from those in the nearby Catholic cemetery. One of them even shows an almost photographic representation of the face of the deceased, which is contrary to the Judaic tradition.