The Jewish Community of Krakow
Krakow
Cracow
A district city in Western Galicia, south Poland.
Its situation on the Vistula river and the commercial route to Prague attracted an influx of immigrants from Germany, with whom the first Jews arrived in 1257.
Early days
In 1335 King Kazimiez the Great founded the town of Kazimierz near the southern end of ancient Krakow and it was there that the Jews settled. For over four centuries the Jews of Kazimierz struggled for the right to work and trade in Krakow proper. At the end of the fourteenth century construction was begun of a large synagogue in Gothic style. It was completed in 1407 and became known as the Alte Shul in Yiddish and Stara Boznica in Polish. It is the oldest medieval synagogue in Poland which is still preserved. In the early fifteen century Jacob Pollack settled there and established the first Yeshiva.
In the early 16th century many Jews from Bohemia Moravia [similar to today's Czech Republic] settled in the town but some of their customs differed from those of the Polish Jews causing disputes between the two groups. Quiet returned only when the rabbis of both groups died. In the succeeding years of the 16th century further immigrants arrived from Germany, Italy. Others came from Spain and Portugal, no doubt including some new-Christians who had decided to revert to Judaism after the Spanish had continued to persecute them. This group included a number of wealthy Jews and physicians who had been enticed by special financial privileges from the king of Poland. It was only in 1563, after appeals from community leaders, that the king stopped this practice. The 16th and first half of the 17th century was a period of cultural advance by the Jews of Krakow-Kazimierz. By 1644 there were seven synagogues including the Alte Shul and the Rema Synagogue named after the Moses Isserles. A number of yeshivot were founded in the town- they made Krakow an important centre of Jewish learning. From 1650 Yomtov Lippman Heller was the rabbi. In 1666 the community was deeply influenced by the Shabbatean messianic movement. By the end of the 16th century the community was controlled by a small number of wealthy families. The leadership known as a minor sanhedrin consisted of 4 rashim [leaders], 14 council member plus five rabbis. The actual duties of administration were assumed in rotation; each of the rashim was Parnas Hahodesh [leader of the month].
17th-18th Centuries
In the 1630s many Jews fleeing from the devastation of the 30 Years War in Germany arrived in Krakow, while in the 1648-9 many others came from Ukraine to escape the Chmielnicki massacres. The community suffered serious damage during the Swedish invasion of Poland in 1655-1660 ["the Deluge"] – many shops were looted and property damaged. When Polish rule was restored the Jews were accused of collaboration with the enemy and attacks on Jewish property resumed, mainly by students and local hooligans. The kings who had previously protected the Jews were now powerless to intervene. There were s number of blood libels and in 1663 Mattathias Calahora was burned at the stake. In 1667 some one thousand Jewish residents died of the plague and most of the Jewish quarter was abandoned. The community was unable to pay its taxes and was saved only when they were granted a moratorium on the payment of their taxes and debts to the state. The non-Jewish majority was not so easy to placate. They demanded the banning of Jews from doing business in the town. Jews were also forbidden to enter the town on Sundays or Christian festivals.
The nobility and the townsfolk were increasingly hostile to the Jews as the religious tolerance that dominated the mentality of the previous generations of Commonwealth citizens was slowly forgotten. The rise of the group of wealthy Jewish families (Oligarchs) was accompanied by worsening economic conditions amongst the majority of the community and therefore be increased social tensions between the two sections. The costs incurred in the struggle against the non-Jewish elements who were continuing bringing libel cases against the Jews and the need to provide financial support for increasing numbers of impoverished Jews forced the community to take out loans from wealthy Christians and the church. During the troubles of 1722-1768 the Jews of Kazimierz suffered both at the hands of the Polish and Russian armies. Known as the `Confederacy of the Bar', it was marked by violence perpetrated against the Jews by both the Russians and the Poles who regarded the Jews as their enemies. Jews were hung on branches of trees and both sides demanded that the Jews provide them with food, housing and help with espionage. In 1772-1776 Kazimierz became part of Austria while Krakow remained in Poland. Then in 1776 Kazimierz was returned to Poland. However Jews were still forbidden to do business in Krakow and a heavy tax was imposed on the community of Kazimierz. Many Jews left the area for Warsaw or other more hospitable towns. During the 1780s Chasidism began to influence the Jews of Krakow. The movement gained many adherents especially amongst the poorer members of the community. Special synagogues were opened up by the Hassidim but the Mitnagdim imposed a ban [Herem] on them in 1785 and 1797.
19th Century
In 1795 Krakow and the surrounding areas were again annexed by Austria and in 1799 the Austrian authorities ordered all Jewish businesses to be removed from Krakow proper (i.e. not from Kazimierz). From 1800 the government determined that the exercise of civil and voting rights were dependent on the payment of a Candle tax- a tax which hit hardest the poorer people. In 1809 Krakow became part of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Some, but not all, of the restrictions and special taxes imposed by the Austrians were cancelled. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the Republic of Krakow was established. It survived until 1846. Jews were permitted to reside outside of Kazimierz if they had received a high standard of secular education, if they wore “modern” clothing and if they owned property valued at more than 5000 zloty. (In 1848 just 198 Jews out of 13,000 met these qualifications). In addition the communal organization was abolished and replaced by a committee for Jewish affairs headed by a Christian chairman. From 1832 the rabbi of Krakow was Dov Berush Meisels. He was widely respected despite opposition from the Hassidim headed by Rabbi Saul Raphael Landau. In 1844 the first Reform Synagogue was established in the town.
In 1846 Krakow was returned to Austria. The Jews of Vienna started to raise funds to assist the needy Jews of Kazimierz. As a result of the revolution two years later which granted civil and voting rights to all, Jews were for the first time elected to the Greater Krakow municipal council, with a programme of greater social justice within the community. They demanded the abolition of the tax levied on kosher meat, proposing instead a tax on poultry which was consumed mainly by the wealthy. The Jews demanded also that the inflated salaries of communal officials be reduced, that the communal hospital by run by the community itself instead of by the Hevra Kadisha. The demanded also that the privileges of the leading wealthy families ("The Oligrarchs") be abolished.
In the 1848 elections to the Austrian parliament in Vienna Rabbi Meisels was returned as the deputy for Krakow. As a Jewish element in the 1848 revolutionary ferment there was established the 'Society for the Spiritual and Material Assimilation of the Jews', which was intended to establish Jews as an integral part of Polish society. When Rabbi Meisels was appointed to a position in Warsaw, he was replaced by Rabbi Simeon Schreiber-Sofer, a strict traditionalist who frequently clashed with the Reform/Assimilationist congregation in the town lead by Joseph Ettinger and Rabbi Simon Dankovitch. After the granting of full emancipation to the Jews of Krakow in 1867-8 they were for the first time permitted to live anywhere in Krakow or Kazimierz. In place of traditional communal organizations a new Jewish religious council was established in which the assimilationist intelligentsia had the upper hand. In 1869 a total of 26 Jewish students were studying that the law faculty and the medical school of the University of Krakow and a further ten at the town's technical college. In the following decade some 200 Jewish pupils attended the municipal secondary schools and teachers' training college. The first Hebrew school, headed by Av Beth Din Chaim Arieh Horowitz, was established in 1874. The first secular Hebrew lending library was opened in Krakow in 1876. The Jewish education system in the town included chadarim and Yeshivot as well as elementary and secondary schools with Polish and German as the languages of instruction.
Towards the end of the 19th century the Zionist movement came to Krakow. To a major degree this was in response to increased anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish pogroms which made many of the Jews feel insecure. They often joined the waves of Polish emigrants to the USA. Others, especially those who spoke German, went to live in Vienna. Those who remained were the Zionists. The first Chovevei Zion society was established in Krakow by Simeon Sofer and and Aaron Markus in the 1880s and the Sfat Emet society was started there in 1892. HaHevrah LeIvrit LeTarbut (the Hebrew culture society) was also active. From 1897 political Zionism led by Osias Thon and Julius Schenwetter started to attract support. Other communal organizations included an academic society Shachar, news magazine Der Yiddishe Arbeiter, the organ of HaPoalei Zion, which was published between 1905 and 1914. In 1900 an independent group established itself in order to fight for civil equality for the Jews. This group was headed by Ignaz Landau and Adolf Gross. Krakow was the centre of all Zionist activity in western Galicia.
Between the Two World Wars
The rise of Polish nationalism, the upheavals in the aftermath of World War I brought widespread unemployment and famine to the area coupled with vicious anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitic party, Endecja, attempted to direct the discontent of the Polish masses against the Jews. The Jewish youth of Krakow, led by Jacob Billik and Y.Alster, tried to organize self-defence measures which succeeded in stopping riots started by followers of the Polish anti-Semitic general Haller in 1918- and 1919.
In 1921 the Jewish population of Krakow was estimated to be 45,000 while in 1931 it had risen to 57,000 out of some 220,000. At the beginning of World War II the Jewish population had risen to 60,000. Between the two world wars Krakow remained an important centre of Jewish political and social life. The Polish language Zionist daily newspaper Nowy Ziennik was published there and most Zionist organizations continued to be active. The Bundist magazine, Walka, was published between 1924 and 1927. The poorer segments of the community continued to live in Kazimierz.
The Holocaust
A few days after the outbreak of war in September 1939 the Germans entered Krakow and the persecution of the Jews began. The Jewish Community Council building and several synagogues were destroyed. A Judenrat with 24 members was appointed in November under Dr Mark Bieberstein and Wilhelm Goldblatt. In the summer of 1940 the two were arrested by the Gestapo. In April 1940 the Germans ordered 75% of the Jews to leave the town. In March 1941 a ghetto was erected and 20,000 Jews were forced to live within its confines. In June 1942 some 6,000 Jews were sent to the Belzec death camp wile a further 300 were shot inside the ghetto. Among the victims were the writer Mordechai Gebirtig and the new head of the Judenrat Arthur Rozenzweig. In October 1942 another 7,000 were sent to their deaths at Belzec. In March 1943 the remainder were sent to Auschwitz.
The Jewish underground began to organize in 1940 and by 1942 they were known as the Jewish Combat Organization headed by Heshek Bauminger, Aharon Liebeskind, Gola Mira, Shimshon Drenger and Abraham Leibowitz-Laban. The organization was in contact with Jewish partisans on the area and also the Warsaw Ghetto. Probably the most famous of their exploits was the attack on the Cyganeria coffee house in the town centre which was a popular meting place for German soldiers. They were also responsible for sabotage on local railway lines. After the liquidation of the ghetto in Krakow the group was active in the Plaskow labour camp. In the Zablocie district of Krakow Oscar Schindler had a factory which he used to save 1,098 Jews from Plaszow.
Some 2,000 survivors returned to the town in 1945-6 after the war, most had been living in Russia. Fearing a pogrom they made no attempt to reestablish the Jewish quarter in Kazimierz. In 1968 the last of the Jews left Kazimierz, the oldest synagogue, the Hoyche Shul became a Jewish museum and only the cemetery was restored with contributions from American and Canadian Jews. After the exodus of 1967-9 just 700 Jews remained in the town but only about 200 identify themselves with the Jewish community.
In 1997 there were 8,000 Jews living in Poland, most of them in the capital Warsaw, a few hundred in Krakow.