The Jewish Community of Losice

Lublin

A city in Poland

Lublin is one of the largest cities in Poland, and is the capital and center of the Lublin Voivodeship.

In the 16th and 17th centuries Lublin was famous for its fairs. Annexed by Austria in 1795, it was incorporated in Russian Poland in 1815. From 1918 to 1939 it was in Poland, and during World War II (1939-1945) it was under German occupation. After the war, Lublin was again part of Poland.

 

21ST CENTURY

The building and grounds of the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva were given to the Jewish Community of Warsaw in 2002-2003. The Jewish Community renovated the building, which had fallen into disrepair, and, based on prewar photographs, restored many of the building’s religious features. The Lublin Branch of the Jewish Community of Warsaw began using part of the building for community activities in 2006. The building’s official reopening took place in February of 2007, with over 600 in attendance.

In May 2005 the Jewish world celebrated the Siyyum HaShas, marking the end of the 7-year cycle of reading a page of Talmud daily. One of the celebrations took place at the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, to honor its former head, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, who invented the system in 1924. A memorial service was also held for Rabbi Shapiro in 2008 in the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, to mark the 75th anniversary of his death. A new Ark and chandelier were installed in the synagogue to honor the occasion.

The old Jewish cemetery site is located in the Kalinowszczyna district. Most of the tombstones were destroyed during World War II, but some of have survived. The new Jewish cemetery was almost completely destroyed during the war. Remnants of the cemetery include the southeastern section of the wall, and the ohel built over Rabbi Meir Shapiro’s grave. 

 

HISTORY

Jews were first mentioned as transients in Lublin in 1316. By the 15th century a community had developed, and became a place of refuge for a number of Jews who had been expelled from other areas. During the second half of the 16th century land was granted to the community so that it could establish a cemetery, and build institutions. Shalom Shachna established a yeshiva in the city in 1518; he was later appointed as the Chief Rabbi of Lublin in 1532. Economically, Jews were allowed to set up movable stalls for shops but not to erect buildings. There was also a Hebrew printing press that began publishing Hebrew books and prayer books in 1547.

In 1602 there were 2,000 Jews in Lublin.

When the Polish high court convened in Lublin between the 16th and 18th centuries, tensions between the city’s Jewish and non-Jewish residents rose significantly, particularly when the court was trying a blood libel case (the first blood libel trial in Lublin took place in 1598). The hearings were followed by attacks on the Jews; some were murdered and their property stolen. If the high court sentenced the accused to death, the execution usually took place on a Saturday in front of the Maharshal Shul (synagogue), and elders of the kehillah and other Jews had to attend. An execution was often followed by an attack on the Jewish Quarter. Additionally, like Jews throughout Poland-Lithuania, the Jews of Lublin suffered greatly during the Chmielnicki uprisings in 1648-1649. Yet another period of hardship followed in the second half of the 18th century with the disintegration of the Polish state.

However, in spite of these hardships, Lublin became both a cultural, economic, and religious center for Polish Jews, due mainly to the fairs and yeshiva. The Council of Four Lands, the central Jewish body of authority, often met in Lublin between 1580 and 1725. Community institutions included a well-organized chevra kaddisha and a "preacher's house," which provided visiting preachers with food and lodging. The fortified Maharshal Shul, the most famous synagogue in Lublin, was built in 1567. It burned down in 1655, but was later rebuilt.

Chasidism played a prominent role in Lublin, mainly through the influence of the local Tsaddikim, including Jacob Isaac Ha-Chozeh ("The Seer") of Lublin, and, from the mid-19th century, the Eiger dynasty. At the same time, there were also some community rabbis who were strongly opposed to the Chasidic movement, particularly Azriel Horovitz (late 18th century) and Joshua Heshel Ashkenazi.

A cholera epidemic broke out in 1829, resulting in the deaths of many Jews. As a result of the increase in burials, a new Jewish cemetery was established that year.

Educational institutions for the community’s children included a cheder and the yeshiva. Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, the first Jewish schools were founded where the language of instruction was Russian or Polish. The city’s first private Jewish high school was opened in 1897.

During the early 20th century the Jews of Lublin were politically and culturally active. The Jewish Public Library opened in 1917. The Polish-Jewish magazine, “Myśl Żydowska” (“Jewish Thought”), began publication in 1916, and the Yiddish “Lubliner Tugblat” (“Lublin Daily”) began publication in 1918. The Bund was also active during this period.

Construction on the famous yeshiva, Chachmei Lublin, began in 1924; the cornerstone laying event was attended by a crowd of about 20,000. The yeshiva opened in 1930, led by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the Chief Rabbi of Lublin. Rabbi Shapiro was a particularly well-known rabbi, in part by pioneering the Daf Yomi system of Talmud study in 1924.

In 1939 there were over 42,000 Jews living in Lublin.


THE HOLOCAUST

Lublin was captured by the Germans on September 18, 1939. During the very first days of the occupation Jews were forcibly evicted from their apartments, physically assaulted, and conscripted for forced labor. Some Jews were taken as hostages, and all of the men were ordered to report to Lipowa Square, where they were beaten. For a while, the Nazis entertained the idea of turning the Lublin District into an area where Jews from the German-occupied parts of Poland and various other areas incorporated into the Reich could be concentrated.

The existing Jewish community council remained in office until January 25, 1940, when the Judenrat was appointed. During the first period of its existence, the Judenrat did not only execute Nazi orders, but initiated a number of projects designed to alleviate the harsh conditions. Public kitchens were established in order to provide meals for refugees and the local poor. The ghetto was divided into a number of units for the purpose of sanitary supervision, with each unit run by a doctor and several medical assistants. Additionally, there were two hospitals with a total of over 500 beds, and a quarantine area in the Maharshal Shul with 300 beds. Hostels were established to house abandoned children, but the Judenrat did not succeed in reestablishing the Jewish school system, and the schooling that was available to children was carried on as an underground operation.

At the beginning of 1941 the Jewish population of Lublin was about 45,000, including approximately 6,300 refugees who had fled from other areas. In March of that year, the Nazis ordered a partial evacuation of the Jews in preparation for the official establishment of the ghetto. Between March 10 and April 30, 1941 about 10,000 Jews were driven from Lublin to villages and towns in the area. The ghetto was created at the end of March, and eventually held a population of about 34,000. On April 24, 1941, the ghetto was sealed, and Jews were no longer permitted to leave.

With the commencement of Operation Reinhard, the secret Nazi plan to kill the majority of Polish Jewry, the Jews of Lublin were among its first victims. The liquidation of the ghetto began on March 16, during which time 30,000 Jews were dispatched to the Belzec death camp. The rate of deportation was fixed at 1,500 per day, and attempts by the Jews to hide were of no avail.

The remaining 4,000 Jews were taken to the Majdan Tatarski ghetto, where they lived for a few more months under unbearable conditions. On September 2, 1942 an aktion resulted in the murder of 2,000 Jews; another 1,800 were killed at the end of October. Approximately 200 survivors were sent to the Majdanek concentration camp.

Lublin was also the site of a prisoner-of-war camp for Jews who served in the Polish Army. The first prisoners arrived in February 1940. Those who came from the area of the general government were set free, but about 3,000, whose homes were in the Soviet-occupied area or in the districts incorporated into the Reich, remained in detention. The Judenrat tried to extend help to the prisoners, and there was also a public committee that provided the inmates with forged documents in order to enable them to leave the camp.

When the Germans stepped up the extermination campaign, there were some attempts to escape from the camp; the Germans responded to this attempt by imposing collective punishments on the prisoners. Nevertheless, there were continued efforts to obtain arms for resistance, and some prisoners succeeded in escaping to the nearby forests, where they joined the partisans; indeed, some of the escaped prisoners assumed senior command posts in the partisan units. The last group of prisoners was deported to Majdanek on November 3, 1943

The Red Army liberated Lublin on July 24, 1944. The next day, Polish army and guerilla units entered the city. A few thousand Jewish soldiers served in those units, and among the guerillas was a Jewish partisan company under Captain Jechiel Grynszpan.

 

POSTWAR

Until the liberation of Warsaw in January 1945, Lublin served as the temporary Polish capital. Several thousand Jews, most of whom survived the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, settled in Lublin. However, the majority of them left between 1946 and 1950, due to Polish antisemitism. The Jewish Cultural Society was functioning in Lublin until 1968, when many of the remaining Lublin Jews left Poland.

A monument dedicated to the Lublin Jews who were killed during the Holocaust was dedicated in 1963. Later, in 1985 a memorial plaque was placed on the wall of the building that once housed the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva.

Sarnaki

A village in Łosice County, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland.

Sarnaki was established in the 17th century. It lies on the railway line Sidlice-Bialistok, about 6 km from the river Bug.

At the beginning of the 19th century there was at Sarnaki an organized Jewish community, with a synagogue, a bet midrash and “stibls” of Hasidim. The children of the community went to heders, and from the 1860’s also to the Polish state school.

The Jews of Sarnaki were well integrated in the local economy. They owned flour-mills, a factory for soft drinks and a factory for cleaning sheep wool. There were also many craftsmen, such as cobblers, blacksmiths, and tailors.

Zionist activity started at Sarnaki at the beginning of the century and became well established in the period between the two world wars. The Zionist youth movements Hehalutz, Betar, and Dror were active in the place. With time, Betar became the largest of the movements.

On the eve of World War II nearly 1,200 Jews were living at Sarnaki.


The Holocaust Period

At the beginning of September 1939, when World War II broke out, Jews of Sarnaki fought in the ranks of the Polish army which tried to stop the German invasion. When the Germans occupied the town, the Jews were immediately subject to persecution. They were ordered to wear an identifying mark (the Sahield of David) on their arm, their movement in public was restricted, and heavy taxes were imposed on them. In the winter of 1939-1940 Jews tried to cross the river Bug eastward into Russia, but only a few were successful. Jewish refugees from west Poland came to Sarnaki and the number of Jews in the town doubled. The overcrowding and the shortage of food and other elementary necessities caused an epidemic of typhoid fever, which the lack of medicines made difficult to suppress.

Following the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the war front reached the region of Sarnaki in September 1941. Units of the Red Army were stationed in the area for a short time and when they retreated many Jews left with them eastward.

In August 1942 the Jews of Sarnaki were expelled to a ghetto in the town Losice. A few months later they were all transported to the death camp of Treblinka. Some who jumped off the train on the way managed to survive.

Poland

Rzeczpospolita Polska -  Republic of Poland 

A country in central Europe, member of the European Union (EU).

21st Century

Estimated Jewish population in 2018: 4,500 out of 38,500,000 (0.01%). Main umbrella organization of the Jewish communities:

Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland - Związek Gmin Wyznaniowych Żydowskich w Polsce (ZGWŻP)
Phone: 48 22 620 43 24
Fax: 48 22 652 28 05
Email: sekretariat@jewish.org.pl
Website: http://jewish.org.pl/

 

HISTORY

The Jews of Poland

1096 | Migration of the Heretics

Where did the Jews come to Poland from? Scholars are divided on this question, but many believe that some came from the Khazar Kingdom, from Byzantium and from Kievan Rus, while most immigrated from Western Europe – from the Lands of Ashkenaz.
One of the theories is that the “butterfly effect” that led the Jews of Ashkenaz to migrate to Poland began with a speech by Pope Urban II, who in 1096 called for the liberation of the holy sites in Jerusalem from the Muslim rule. The Pope's call ignited what would come to be known as The Crusades - vast campaigns of conquest by the Christian faithful, noble and peasant alike, who moved like a tsunami from Western Europe to the Middle East, trampling, stealing and robbing anything they could find along the way.
Out of a fervent belief that “heretics” were “heretics”, be they Jews or Muslims, the militant pilgrims made sure not to bypass the large Jewish communities in the Ashkenaz countries, where they murdered many of the local Jews, mostly in the communities of Worms and Mainz on the banks of the Rhine. Following these massacres, known in Jewish historiography as the Massacres of Ttn”u (after the acronym of the year of Hebrew calendar), Jews started migrating east, into the Kingdom of Poland.

1264 | The Righteous Among The Nations from Kalisz.

In the 13th century Poland was divided into many districts and counties, and to rule them all an advanced bureaucratic system was required. In 1264 the Polish prince Boleslav, also known as the Righteous One of Kalisz (Kalisz was a large city in the Kingdom of Poland) issued a bill of rights that granted the Jews extensive freedom of occupation as well as freedom of religious practice. This bill of rights (privilegium, in Latin) allowed many Jews – literate merchants, experts in economy, bankers, coin makers and more – to fill various roles in the administrative apparatus of the kingdom.
At that time, the Catholic Church in Poland was in the habit of disseminating all sorts of blood libels against the Jews. Article 31 of the Prince Boleslav of Kalisz's privilegium tried to rein in this phenomenon by stating: “Accusing Jews of drinking Christian blood is expressly prohibited. If despite this a Jew should be accused of murdering a Christian child, such charge must be sustained by testimony of three Christians and three Jews.”

1370 | From Esther to Esther

It turns out that Esther from the Scroll of Esther was not the only Esther who saved the Jewish people. Legend tells of a beautiful Jewish woman from Poland named Esther'ke who was a mistress of King Casimir II the Great of Poland (1310-1370) and even bore him two daughters.
It is unclear whether it was love that aroused Casimir's sympathy for the Chosen People. What is known is that according to legend, like the Queen Esther from the Purim story, Esther'ke also looked out for her people and asked the King to establish a special quarter for Jews in Krakow (and this quarter is no legend). The King acquiesced to his lover's request and named the quarter for himself – the Kazimierz Quarter. In addition, and this is no legend either, messengers were sent to all Jewish communities in Poland and beyond inviting the Jews to relocate to Krakow, then the capital of the kingdom.
The invitation to come to Poland was like a much-needed breath of air for the Jews of Ashkenaz, for those were the days in which the Black Death ravaged Europe, which for some reason was claimed to have “skipped” the Jews. For the audacity of not contracting the plague, the Jews faced baseless accusations of having poisoned the drinking wells in order to spread the plague.

1520 | A State Within a State

In the early 16th century the center of gravity of Jewish life gradually moved from the countries of Central Europe to locations all over Poland. According to various historical sources, in the late 15th century there were around 15 yeshivas operating throughout Poland. The study of Torah flourished in the large communities and became the central axis of Ashkenazi religious life. It is no surprise, therefore, that the common name for Poland among the Jews who lived there was “Po-lan-Ja” - or in Hebrew: "God resides here".
The status of the Jews in Poland had no equal at the time anywhere in the world. Almost everywhere else in Europe they were persecuted, expelled and subject to various restrictions, whereas in Poland they were granted a special, privileged status.
In the early 16th century there were some 50,000 Jews living in Poland. During these years an interest-based alliance began to form between the Jews and the Polish nobility. The nobles, wishing to avail themselves of the Jews' connections and skills in business management, appointed Jews to various positions in the management of their feudal estates and gave them bills of rights according them special status.
In 1520 the “Council of Four Lands” was established in Poland. This council, which was a sort of “state within the state”, was composed of the representatives of all the Jewish communities of Poland, from Krakow and Lublin to Vilnius and Lithuania (which were then still part of the Polish “Commonwealth”). The main function of the Council was to collect taxes for the authorities, and it enjoyed judicial autonomy based on Jewish halacha. The Council operated for 244 years, and is considered the longest-lasting Jewish leadership in history, at least since the First Temple Era.

1569 | Demon-graphics

In the year 1618 the authorities of Krakow appointed a commission to find the reasons for hostility between Jewish and Christian merchants. The chairman of the commission, an academic by the name of Sebastian Miczynski, found that the reason for the animosity was the rapid increase in the number of Jews in the city, stemming from the fact that “none of them die at war or from plague, and in addition they marry at age 12 and multiply furiously”.
Miczynski's conclusion was not without basis: The growth rate of the Jewish community in Poland, known in research as “The Polish Jewish demographic miracle”, was indeed astounding. By the mid 17th century the number of Jews in Poland reached several hundred thousand – about half of all Jews in the world. By the mid 18th century their numbers reached approximately one million souls.
However, although Miczynski's diagnosis was correct, the reasons he offered for it, which were heavily tainted by anti-Semitism, were unsurprisingly wrong. Various researchers have found that the reason for the relatively rapid growth of Jews in Poland was a low rate of infant mortality among them compared to the Christian population. Among the reasons for this one can offer are the culture of mutual aid prevalent among Jews, the fact that newlywed couples usually lived with the bride's family, which offered better nutrition, and the fact that Jewish religious laws enjoin better hygiene practices than were the norm in the rest of pre-modern Europe.
In 1569 Poland annexed large parts of Ukraine under the Treaty of Lublin. Many Jews chose to migrate to Ukraine, and found a new source of livelihood there – leasing land. This they once again did in conjunction with the Polish nobility. Many of the Ukrainian peasants resented the new immigrants. Not only did the feudal lords tax them heavily, they thought, now they also “enslave us to the enemies of Christ, the Jews.”
During this time some brilliant intellectuals emerged in the Jewish areas of Poland, including Rabbi Moses Isserles (aka “The Rema” after his acronym), Rabbi Shlomo Lurie and Rabbi Joel Sirkis, and the great yeshivas of Lublin and Krakow were founded. The rabbinical elite was also the political elite among the Jewish community, setting the rules of life down to the smallest detail – from the number of jewels a woman may wear to requiring approval by community administrators in order to wed.

1648 | Bohdan The Brute

Had there been a senior class photo of all the worst oppressors the Jewish people have known, Bohdan (also known as Bogdan) Khmelnytsky would probably be standing front and center in it. Khmelnytsky, the leader of the Ukrainian Cossacks who fought for independence against Poland, was responsible for particularly lethal pogroms against the Jews of Ukraine. These pogroms were fueled by a combination of Christian revival and popular protest against Polish subjugation. The Jews, who were seen as the Polish nobility's “agents of oppression” paid a terrible price: Approximately 100,000 of them were murdered in these pogroms.
The Khmelnytsky Massacres, also known in Jewish historiography as “The Ta”ch and Ta”t Pogroms”, left the Jewish community of Poland shocked and bereaved. The community's poets composed dirges and the rabbis decreed mourning rituals. A chilling account of these events can be found in the book “Yeven Mezulah” by Jewish scholar Nathan Hannover, who fled the pogroms himself and described them in chronological order. In time many works were written based on this account. The most famous are “The Slave” by Isaac Bashevis Singer, and the poem “The Rabbi's Daughter” by the great Hebrew poet and translator Shaul Tchernichovski.
Despite the grief and sorrow, the Jewish community of Ukraine soon recovered. Proof of this can be found in the accounts of English traveler William Cox, who wrote 20 years after the massacres: “Ask for an interpreter and they bring you a Jew; Come to an inn, the owner is a Jew; If you require horses to travel, a Jew supplies and drives them; and if you wish to buy anything, a Jew is your broker.”

1700 | A Very Good Name

The year 1700 saw the birth of the man who would reshape Orthodox Judaism and become the founder of one of the most important movements in all its long history: Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer, far better known as the Baal Shem Tov, or The Besh”t for short.
The Baal Shem Tov began his career as a healer with herbs, talismans and sacred names, thus becoming known as a “Baal Shem” - a designation for someone who knows the arcana of the divine names, which he can use to mystical effect.
Rumor of the righteous man who performs miracles and speaks of a different Judaism – less academic and scholarly, more emotional and experiential – soon spread far and wide. Religious discourse soon included terms such as “dvekut”, which means “devotion”, and “pnimiut”, meaning “inner being”. Thus was the Hasidic movement born, emphasizing moral correctness and the desire for religious devotion, placing a high premium on the discipline of Kabbalah. The immense success of Hasidism stemmed from its being a popular movement which allowed entry to any Jew, even if he wasn't much for book smarts.
The Besh”t also set the template for the form of the Hasidic circle: A group of people coalescing around the personality of a charismatic leader who provides each member with personal guidance. Among the most famous Hasidic movement today one can count Chabad/Liubavitch, Ger and Breslov, which was founded by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (the great-grandson of the Besh”t), and is unique in having no single leader or “Rebbe” or Admor, a Hebrew acronym which stands for “Our Master, Teacher and Rabbi”, the title of other Hasidic leaders, as none is considered worthy to carry the mantle of the founder.
Those were also the years in which Kabbalist literature began to spread in Poland, along with various mystical influences, including the Sabbatean movement. One of the innovation of the Kabbalist literature was the way in which the issue of observing commandments was perceived: In establishment rabbinical thought, the commandments were seen as a device for maintaining community structures and the religious lifestyle. The Hasidim, on the other hand, claimed that the commandments were a mystical device through which even a common man may effect changes in the heavenly spheres. In modern terms one may say that the meaning of observing the commandments was “privatized”, ceasing to be the property of the rabbinical elite and becoming the personal business of every common observant Jew.

1767 | What Came First – Wheat or Vodka?

To paraphrase the eternal questions of “what came first – the chicken or the egg?” 18th century Poles asked “What came first – wheat or vodka?” What they meant is, was it the great profitability of grain-based liquor that created mass alcohol addiction, or was it the addiction to alcohol that created the demand for wheat? Either way, the idea of turning wheat into vodka had a magical draw for Jews in the steppes of Poland. In the second half of the 18th century vodka sales accounted for approximately 40% of all income in Poland. The Jews, who recognized the immense financial potential of this trade, took over the business of leasing liquor distilleries and taverns from the nobles. In fact, historians have determined that some 30% of all Jews in the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania had some connection to the liquor business.
But liquor was far from the only field of commerce the Jews of Poland engaged in. They traded all manner of goods. In a sample of data from the years 1764-1767, collected from 23 customs houses, it was found that out of 11,485 merchants, 5,888 were Jews, and that 50%-60% of all retail commerce was held by Jewish merchants.
The reciprocal relations between the Jews and the Magnates, the Polish nobility, became ever tighter. Save for rare phenomena, such as the habit of some nobles to force Jews to dance before them in order to humiliate them, these relations were stable and dignified. Historians note that the Jewish leaser “was not a parasite cringing in fear, but a man aware of his rights, as well as his obligations”.

1795 | The Empires Swallow Poland

Until the partition of Poland, Poland's Jews could live in cities such as Krakow or Lublin, for example, with almost no direct contact with the outside political and legal authorities. Most of them resided in towns or hamlets (“Shtetl”, in Yiddish) where they lived in a closed cultural and social bubble. They spoke their own language, Yiddish, and their children were taught in separate institutions – the cheder for young children and then the Talmud-Torah. The legal system and political leadership were also internal: The tribunals and the Kahal, which operated on the basis of halacha, were the sole court of appeals for the settling of disputes and disagreements.
The only connection most Jews had with the outside world was in their work, which usually involved leasing of some sort from the nobles. Proof of this can be found in the words of Jewish storyteller Yechezkel Kutik, who wrote that “In those days, what was bad for the paritz (the Polish feudal lord) was at least partly bad for the Jews. Almost everyone made their living from the paritz”.
In 1795 Poland was partitioned between three empires – Russia, Austria and Prussia, the nucleus of modern Germany. This brought an end to the shared history of Poland's Jews, and began three distinctly different stories: That of the Jews of the Russian-Czarist Empire, that of the Jews of Galicia under Austrian rule, and that of the Jews of Prussia, who later became the Jews of Germany.
The situation for Jews in Austria and Prussia was relatively good, definitely when compared to that of Jews living under Czarist rule, which imposed various financial edicts upon them and allowed them freedom of movement only within the Pale of Settlement, where conditions were harsh. The nadir was the outbreak of pogroms in the years 1881-1884, which led to the migration of some 2 million Jews to the United States – the place that would come to replace Poland as the world's largest host of Jews. Upon the partition of Poland, most Jews living in that country found themselves under Russian rule. Please see the entry “The Jews of Russia” for further information regarding them.

1819 | The Jews of Galicia

The image of the “Galician Jew” was and still is a code not only for a geographic identity, but mostly for a unique Jewish identity which combined a multicultural-ethnicity with a cunning, humorous, warm and sympathetic folklore figure. The “Galician Jew” could be a devout Hasid, an enlightened educated person, a Polish nationalist or a Zionist activist, a great merchant or a vendor trudging from door to door. This Jew was weaned on several different cultures and could gab in several tongues – German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian and Polish.
Galicia extended over the south of Poland. Its eastern border was Ukraine, but the Austrian empire ruled over it from 1772 to the end of WW1. In the second half of the 19th century Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph granted the Jews fully equal rights. The city of Lvov became a magnet for educated Jews from all over Europe. Yiddish newspapers, including the “Zeitung”, operated there at full steam, commerce flourished and Zionist movements, among them Poalei Zion, played a central role in reviving Jewish nationality.
At the same time the Hasidic movement also flourished in Galicia, branching out from several Hasidic courts and dynasties of “Tzadiks”. Among the best known of these Hasidic sects were those of Belz and Sanz, which preserved the traditional Hasidic lifestyle, including dress and language, and maintained tight relations with the “Tzadik” who headed the court.
Galicia was also the soil from which the writers of the age of Haskala (the Jewish Enlightenment movement) grew – from Joseph Perl, the pioneer of Hebrew literature, who in 1819 wrote “Megale Tmirin” (“Revealer of Mysteries”), the first Hebrew novel, and ending with Yosef Haim Brenner and Gershon Shofman, who lived in Lvov and skillfully described Jewish life there in the early 20th century.
The multicultural, equal-rights idyll ended for the Jews of Galicia against the backdrop of cannon shells and flames of WW1. The region of Galicia passed from hand to hand between the Austrian and Russian armies, and the soldiers of both massacred the Jews again and again. This is what S. (Shloyme) Ansky, author of “The Dybbuk” and the writer who commemorated the fate of Galician Jews during the war, wrote on the subject: “In Galicia an atrocity beyond human comprehension has been committed. A large region of a million Jews, who but yesterday enjoyed all human and civil rights, is surrounded by a fiery chain of iron and blood, cut off and set apart from the world, given to the rule of wild beasts in the form of Cossacks and soldiers. The impression is as though an entire tribe of Israel is becoming extinct.”

1862 | The Siren Call of HaTsefira

While the Haskala, the Jewish Enlightenment movement, was born in Western Europe, its echoes soon reached the eastern part of the continent as well, and Poland in particular. One of the seminal events illustrating the roots put down by the Haskala movement in Poland was the founding of the periodical “HaTsefira” in Warsaw. “HaTsefira” became one of the most highly-regarded Hebrew newspapers and sought to take a real part in the process of secularizing the Hebrew language and turning it from a liturgical tongue to a living, everyday medium.
The newspaper gained steam in the late 1870s, when the editorial board was joined by Nachum Sokolov, journalist, author and Zionist-national thinker, who in his latter years served as President of the World Zionist Organization. Sokolov gradually reduced the emphasis of “HaTsefira” on popular science, giving it a serious journalistic and literary character instead. Under his leadership the periodical became a daily in 1886, and soon stood out as the most influential Hebrew newspaper in Eastern Europe, until it died out in the decades between the World Wars.
All of the most prominent Hebrew writers of those days published their works in HaTsefira: Mendele Mocher Sforim, Y.L.Peretz and Shalom Aleichem in the 19th century, Dvorah Baron, Uri Nissan Genessin, Shalom Ash and Yaacov Fichman in the early 20th century, and just before WW1 it was home to the works of a few promising youngsters, including Nobel-winning authour Shmuel Yosef Agnon and acclaimed nationalist poet Uri Zvi Greenberg.

1900 | Warsaw

In the first decade of the 20th century Warsaw became the capital of the Jews of Poland and a global Jewish center. The city was home to the headquarters of the political parties, many welfare institutions, trade unions, and Jewish newspapers and periodicals published in a variety of languages. Prominent in particular was juggernaut of literary and publishing activity in this city from the 1880s to the eve of WW1.
Among the most famous literary institutions of the period were the Ben Avigdor Press, which ignited the realist “New Movement” in Hebrew literature; Achiassaf Press, founded by the tea magnate Wissotzky, which operated in the spirit of Achad Haam and published books of a Jewish-historical nature; the HaShiloach newspaper, which was copied from Odessa and was edited for a year by Chaim Nachman Bialik (later anointed national poet of the State of Israel), the newspapers “HaTsofeh” and “HaBoker” and more.
All these and many others were produced at hundreds of Hebrew printing presses which popped up like mushrooms after a rain. This industry attracted Jewish intellectuals who found work writing, editing, translating and doing other jobs required by publishing and the press. In his essay “New Hebrew Culture In Warsaw” Prof. Dan Miron wrote that: “All the Hebrew writers of the time passed through Warsaw, some staying for years and others for a short time”.
Also famous were the “literary tribunals”, especially that of author Y.L. Peretz, who held a sort of salon or court at his home which was frequented by eager literary cubs. These would submit their callow works to the revered giant of letters and tremblingly await his verdict. The Peretz court was far from the only one, though. Jewish writers and intellectuals arrived from all over Russia to “literary houses”, “salons” and other establishments, convened mostly on Sabbaths and holidays to discuss matters of great import. One of the most famous of these was the home of pedagogue Yitzchak Alterman, whose lively Hanukkah and Purim parties drew many intellectuals. These, we assume, served as inspiration for little Nanuchka, the host's son, later to become famous as poet Nathan Alterman.

Jewish Demographics In Warsaw

Year | Number of Jews
1764 1,365
1800 9,724
1900 219,128
1940 393,500
1945 7,800


1918 | The First Jewish Party in Poland

Upon the end of WW1 the Jews of Poland also fell victim to the game of monopoly played by Poland against its neighbors, particularly Soviet Russia. The Poles accused the Jews of Bolshevism, the Soviets saw them as capitalists and bourgeoisie, and these accusations turned into dozens of pogroms and tens of thousands of Jewish murder victims.
In 1921, after 125 years under various occupiers, Poland once again became a sovereign and independent state. At first the future seemed bright. The new Polish constitution guaranteed the Jews full equality and promised religious tolerance. However, like many of the supposedly democratic states formed between the two world wars, the regime in Poland also swayed between the values of Enlightenment and equality and an ethnic-based nationalism.
This was the unstable reality under which the Jews of Poland lived for 18 years, until the start of WW2. During these years the Jews experienced some bad times, during which for example they were banned from public office, and were discriminated against in matters of taxation and higher education admissions, where quotas were set limiting the number of Jews at the universities. At other times, mostly under the reign of Jozef Pilsudski (1926-1935), who was known for his relative opposition to anti-Semitism, the edicts issued against the Jews were eased.
During the Pilsudski era the Jewish parties combined to form a joint list for the legislative elections, winning 6 seats in the Sejm (lower house of the Polish parliament) and 1 in the senate, which made them the sixth-largest party. This was a mere 11 years before the outbreak of WW2 and the Holocaust of Polish Jewry.
One of the most influential figures among Jewish political leadership in Poland was Yitzhak Gruenbaum (Izaak Grünbaum), leader of the General Zionists Party, who foresaw the rise of dictatorial elements in the Sejm and made aliyah in 1933. He was right. From 1935 until the German invasion Poland was ruled by an openly dictatorial, anti-Semitic regime. During these four years some 500 anti-Semitic incidents took place, the system of “ghetto benches” was put in place, separating Jewish and Polish students at universities, and the employment options of Polish Jews were limited to such a degree that the Jewish community of Poland, numbering over three million people at the time, was considered the poorest diaspora in Europe.

1939 | The Holocaust of the Jews of Poland

September 1st, 1939, the day the Nazis invaded Poland, was etched into the collective Jewish memory in infamy. Of 3.3 million Jews who lived in Poland on the eve of the Nazi invasion, only around 350,000 survived. Some 3 million Polish Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust.
The annihilation of the Jews of Poland took place step by step. It began with various decrees, such as the gathering of Jews in ghettos, the obligation to wear an identifying mark, the imposition of a curfew in the evenings, the marking of Jewish-owned stores and more – and ended with the execution of the “Final Solution”, a satanic plan of genocide, which culminated in the deportation of the Jews of Poland to the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Majdanek, Sobibor, Chelmno and Treblinka – all located on Polish soil.
One of the best known expressions of resistance by the Jews of Poland to the Nazi plan of annihilation was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The revolt symbolized a triumph of spirit for the Jews of the ghetto, who embarked on it although they knew that their chances of winning or even surviving were nil.
Alongside the armed resistance by the Jews of the ghetto there was also cultural resistance. In October 1939 Emanuel Ringelblum – a historian, politician and social worker – started the “Oneg Shabbat” (“Sabbath Delight”) project in the ghetto, in which he was joined by dozens of intellectuals including authors, teachers and historians. This collective produced many works of writing on various facets of life in the ghetto, and thus became an archive and think tank dealing with current events while documenting them for future historians' reference.
In August 1942, in the midst of the deportation of the Jews of Warsaw, the archive was divided in three and each part buried for safe-keeping. Two of the three parts, secreted in metal crates and two milk jugs, were found after the war. These two parts, located in 1946 and 1950, serve to this day as imported first-hand sources on Jewish life in the ghetto, and also as testament to the courage and spiritual strength of the intellectuals whose only weapons were the pen and the camera.

2005 | Jewish Renaissance in Poland?

At the end of WW2 there were some 240,000 Jews living in Polish territories, 40,000 of them who survived the camps and another 200,000 refugees, returning from the Soviet Union territories. The displaced Jews lived in poverty and cramped conditions, and were treated with hostility by the general population despite their attempts to integrate into Polish society. In July 1946, just a year after the war ended, this hostility erupted in a pogrom in the city of Kielce. The pretext for the murder of 42 out of 163 Holocaust survivors in the city, and the wounding of most of the rest? The ancient blood libel about matza and Christian children.
This is where the Zionist movement swung into action, managing to smuggle about 100,000 of the remaining Jews in Poland to Israel under the “Bricha”, or “Escape” movement.
After WW2 Poland became a Communist country, which it remained until 1989. 1956 saw the start of the “Gomulka Aliyah” (named after Wladislaw Gomulka, Secretary General of the Polish Communist party), which lasted for a few years and brought some 35,000 more Jews to Israel from Poland. In 1967 Poland cut off relations with Israel and in 1968, amidst an anti-Semitic incitement campaign, another few thousand Jews made aliyah. This practically brought an end to the Jewish community of Poland.
At the start of the new millennium, Poland was considered the greatest mass grave of the Jewish people. The numbers speak for themselves: Before WW2 there were around 1,000 active Jewish communities in Poland, but in the year 2000 only 13 remained. Before the war Warsaw was home to almost 400,000 Jews. In 2000 only 1,000 Jews remained.
And then, at the start of the new century, a so-called “Jewish Renaissance” took place in Poland, and is still going on today. In 2005 a museum was opened across the street from the Warsaw Ghetto, where 1,000 years of Jewish history in Poland are on display. Once a year a Jewish festival is held in Krakow, exposing thousands of curious visitors from all over the world to Jewish songs and dance, kleizmer music and Yiddishke food. The Jewish theater is thriving (although it includes but one Jewish actor), and around the country “dozens of “Judaica Days” and symposiums on Jewish topics are held annually.

* All quotes in this article, unless otherwise stated, are from “From a People to a Nation: The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772-1881”, Broadcast University Press, 2002

Łuków

Yiddish: ליקעווע, לוקאב/ Likeve, Lukov; Russian: Lukov

A city and the capital of Łuków County in the Lublin Voivodeship, Poland.

21^ST CENTURY

One former prayer house on Browarna Street, was reconstructed after World War II (1939-1945) and served as a municipal office; during the 21^st century, however, it remained unoccupied, until it was ultimately torn down in 2016. Another former prayer house, located on Zdanowskiego Street, which also served as a beit midrash (house of study), served as the headquarters of the Judenrat during the war. After the war it was renovated, and has housed various government offices.

The new Jewish cemetery, which dates to the 19^th century, has a pyramid-shaped lapidary with a commemorative plaque. The old Jewish cemetery was destroyed during World War II.

 

HISTORY
Łuków was home to a substantial Jewish community by the 15^th century. The major halakhist Rabbi Joel Sirkes (known as the Bach, ב"ח) served as the community’s rabbi for a period at the end of the 16^th century through the beginning of the 17^th century. However, during the Chmielnicki Massacres of 1648-1649 the community suffered heavy losses and the synagogue was burned down.

Things improved for Łuków’s Jewish community shortly thereafter. In 1659 they were granted a royal privilege, which reconfirmed their previous rights to live in the town, to purchase land and houses, and to work in commerce and as craftsmen. Additionally, they were also granted permission to build a synagogue and consecrate a cemetery.

The Jewish population grew substantially during the second half of the 18^th century and through the 19^th century, a result of the area’s economic advancement. According to the 1765 census the Jewish population was 543 (137 families). In 1827 the Jewish population was 2,023 (approximately 60% of the total population); by 1857 that number had grown to 2,114 (approximately 68% of the total population). In 1897 the Jewish population of Łuków was 4,799 (approximately 55% of the total population). By 1921 the Jewish population had increased to 6,145 (49% of the total population).

Many of Łuków’s Jews affiliated with the Chasidic movement, particularly the sects from Kotsk, Aleksandrow, Radzyn, and Gur. A number of Chasidic rabbis made their homes in the city for a period of time, including Hershele Morgensztern, who lived in Łuków between 1906 and 1920.

The Jews of Łuków were active economically and politically, particularly during the interwar period. 85% of the 530 active local businesses were owned by Jews, and Łuków’s Jews also established a number of mercantile and craft associations, as well as guilds for craftsmen. Ten Jews served on the 24-member community council; half of the Jewish delegates were members of the Bund, testifying to the movement’s growing importance and influence within the Jewish community (until 1931 the most influential political organization in Łuków was the Agudas Yisroel). A weekly Yiddish newspaper, Dos Łukower Vort, began to be published in 1927, and the magazine Łukower Nayes was published in 1931.

Education options during the interwar period included 4 cheders, 2 Talmud Torahs, and an elementary school that was run by the Mizrachi Zionists. Additionally, Jewish students made up approximately 50% of the local elementary school. An elementary school affiliated with the Central Yiddish School Organization (TSIShO) functioned in Łuków between 1928 and the mid-1930s.  

However, in spite of the major advances and level of activity by Łuków’s Jews, the interwar period saw a steep rise in both national and local antisemitism. A pogrom broke out in Łuków in 1920, and a number of economic boycotts were waged against the Jewish community.


THE HOLOCAUST
About 6,000 Jews lived in Łuków at the outbreak of World War. In May 1942 they were joined by over 2,000 Jews from Slovakia who were deported to Łuków. The first major deportation occurred in October 1942 when the Slovakian Jews were sent with 2,000 Jews from Łuków to the Treblinka death camp, where they were killed on arrival.

A closed ghetto was established in Łuków for the remaining Jews at the beginning of December 1942. It was liquidated on May 2, 1943.

 

POSTWAR

Approximately 150 Jews from Łuków survived the war. Łuków’s Jewish community was not reestablished.

Miedzyrzec Podlaski

Mezhirech or Mezritch in Jewish sources. A a city in Biała Podlaska County, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland.

The beginning of Jewish settlement in the town is uncertain. According to one version, King Wladyslaw Jagello granted in 1390 the village of Mezrich and another nearby village to a person called Abraham Hamietz (in Yiddish “Ben Haim”), not identified as a Jew. The name Hamietz is regarded by some as a distortion of the name Haimes, therefore leading to the conclusion that the Jewish settlement in the place began around the year 1400. According to another theory, the first Jews came to Mezrich at the beginning of the 16th century. They were Jews who had been expelled from Lithuania at the end of the 15th century.

In 1560 there were at Mezrich a Jewish street, a synagogue that served also as a school, and a Jewish cemetery. Mezrich is one of the first places in Poland in which Hebrew books were printed. A Hebrew printing press existed at Mezrich in 1595 and the owner, Jacob Polack, moved it later to Basle in Switzerland.

Following the unification of Poland and Lithuania (in the 16th century) the community of Mezrich was annexed to the community of Tykocin (Tiktin), but it struggled for its independence and finally won it in 1688. Mezrich was an important Jewish community. It sent delegates to the "Council of Four Lands” of which one of them became a Parnas (leader) of the council. At the time of the Bogdan Chmielnicki massacres in 1648 300 Jews were massacred at Mezrich.

With time, the community of Mezrich was rehabilitated and developed as mainly a Jewish town. In 1674 the Jews formed 21% of the total inhabitants, but their number continued to grow and in 1827 they formed the largest ethnic group of Mezrich (65%).

The offer of the Jews of Mezrich in 1793 to join the freedom fight of Tadeusz Kosciuszko against Russia and Prussia, then menacing the independence of Poland, was not accepted and the rebels even harmed property of the Jews. In 1815 the Jews of Mezrich were victims of a blood libel, causing 11 of them to be arrested. They were acquitted and released after 20 months but 3 of them died in prison. At the end of 1830, when the Poles rebelled against Russia, the Jews again supported the Poles.

When the Council of Four Lands” was revoked in 1764 the community of Mezrich became an autonomous body. However, when the region was annexed to Russia in 1815, the Russians denied all authority to the Jewish communities and their heads were appointed by the Russians. In Mezrich, a rabbi and two Dayanim (religious judges) were appointed, but they were remunerated by the community.

Most of the Jews of Mezrich were "mitnaggedim", unlike the Jews of the neighboring settlements who were generally "Hasidim", but the relationships between the mitnaggedim and the hasidim of Mezrich were proper. Well known hasidic admors visited the town and for a certain period a hasidic rabbi, Yehiel Michal Heilperin of Kuzmir, was the town’s rabbi. Among the many rabbis of Mezrich had been some who emigrated eventually to Eretz Israel, like rabbi Joshua Leib Diskin, who settled in Jerusalem and founded the orphanage that bears his name, and rabbi Isser Shapira, who went to Eretz Israel in 1930. Rabbi Isaac Jacob Wachtvogel, who was a rabbi at Me’ah She’arim in Jerusalem, and rabbi Shimon Jacob Halevi, who served as a rabbi in Tel Aviv, had both been born at Mezrich.

The great synagogue, the building of which began in 1761, had a capacity of 3,000 worshippers. Opposite the synagogue stood the great "bet midrash". Both were damaged in a fire that broke out in 1845 and destroyed 300 Jewish houses. The Jews of Mezrich suffered great hardships as a result of the many fires in the course of the years. As in many other similar occasions, a plague broke out after the fire of 1845, the town was quarantined, and according to the records of the town’s Jewish pharmacist Eichler, some 1000 Jewish residents of Mezrich died in the plague. Both the town and the community were restored after a time, and the synagogue and the bet midrash were rebuilt. Apart from the great synagogue and the great bet midrash there were at Mezrich also a number of smaller batei midrash of various guilds of craftsmen and of followers of different hasidic centers.

Mezrich was known for its many charitable institutions, like an orphanage, a home for the aged, and various charity funds. In 1850 the community built a hospital. This hospital was enlarged after World War I and annexed to it were out-patient clinics and a mother and child clinic. In 1925 a branch of the Jewish health organization of Poland was set up in Mezrich.

In 1867 a Talmud Torah was opened and a special building was built for it. Later, the community opened additional schools as well as a yeshiva. With time, secular studies and also spoken Hebrew were added to the curriculum.

In independent Poland, in the period between the two World Wars, there were at Mezrich two elementary schools for boys and two schools for girls, and also a high school of four classes, in which Hebrew was taught. The community of Mezrich had an intensive cultural life. Authors were invited to give lectures and theatrical groups paid regular visits to Mezrich. Towards the end of the 19th century a large library was opened, with books in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian and German. The Jewish fire brigade, a voluntary body that had been formed in 1904, had a brass band.

From the outset, the economy of the Jews of Mezrich had been founded on trade and crafts. The local merchants marketed their goods in the markets of Germany and brought from there textile and silk articles to Mezrich. They were influenced by the German enlightenment movement and through them its concepts reached the Jews of Mezrich.

In 1782 the Jews of Mezrich were granted civil rights and with the annexation to Russia in the partition of Poland the Russian markets opened to the town’s merchants. The condition of the craftsmen likewise improved. The local Jews were also the pioneers of industry in the town. The products of the Mezrich tanners, furs and leather for shoes, were distributed all over the country. In the 19th century, the manufacture of bristle was developed and by World War I Mezrich was at the top of the bristle industry. In 1845 a local Jew established a factory for eau de cologne. He was known throughout the country and participated in an international fair in cologne. In addition to the big industries which the Jews developed at the middle of the 19th century, there were at Mezrich also a number of smaller enterprises, like a match factory, a pen factory, etc. In 1906 a Jewish commercial bank was opened.

World War I virtually crushed the economy of Mezrich. Many of its citizens left the town and those who stayed suffered hunger. The community established an orphanage to which Jewish children were brought also from other settlements in the area.

After the war (1918), the Jews of Poland endeavored to rehabilitate their life, but the new borders of the state brought the end to the export trade and with it a drastic contraction of trade generally. The Jewish merchants suffered also from the competition of the Polish cooperatives that were established in the 1920’s. Similarly affected were also the small Jewish manufacturers and craftsmen. In 1921 there were at Mezrich 250 various Jewish workshops that employed some 800 people, owners and employees. At the same time there were many unemployed who depended on help from relatives in other countries. An improvement set in toward the end of the 1920’s. The American "Joint” assisted in the restoration

And rehabilitation of houses and business places, the Jewish craftsmen established unions of their own and thus enabled themselves to get bank credits. In 1927 a Jewish cooperative bank was founded, as well as some workshops, small factories, and three mills. Some of the Jews were of the liberal professions.

Zionism spread in the community of Mezrich already at the time of the "Hibbat Zion” movement, and in 1882 a group of 20 pioneers from Mezrich established the settlement Yesud Ha-Ma’alah in Galilee. In the period between the two world wars, from the middle of the 1920’s, the Zionist parties and their youth movements were active at Mezrich. There were local branches of the “General Zionists”, “Hamizrachi”, the “Revisionists”, “Hatenuah Hameuhedet”, “Hehalutz”, and the youth movements “Hehalutz Hazair” and “Hashomer Hazair”, “Gordonia”, “Hehalutz Mizrachi”, “Zeirei Mizrachi”, and “Betar”. In 1923 the sport association “Bar Kochba” founded a branch at Mezrich, with a drama circle and a band. “Agudat Israel”, a non- Zionist party, established a branch in 1920. Some time later “Zeirei Agudat Israel” too founded a local branch and a “Beth Jacob” school for girls was opened. Among the schools of Mezrich were a Jewish gymnasium and a Hebrew school of the “Tarbut” chain.

Among the Jewish workers, the Bund, at Mezrich since 1901, had a strong influence. The Bund was active also in the spheres of education, culture, and sport.

In 1920 17 Jews were elected to the town’s council, out of the total of 24 members. A Jew acted as a deputy mayor. In 1937, in order to reduce the number of Jewish councilors, a number of nearby villages, in which no Jews were living, were annexed to Mezrich, and thus the number of Jews in the institutions of the town diminished.

On the eve of World War II (September 1939) the Jews constituted about 90% of the 20,000 inhabitants of Mezrich. The town occupied an area of about 60 square kilometers and most of the 1600 houses of the town were owned by Jews. 180 out of the total of 201 shops of Mezrich were owned by Jews , as well as its main industries - the bristle industry, with an export of millions of dollars, and the tanning industry, well known all over Poland.

The Holocaust Period
In the first days of World War II, which broke out on September 1,1939, Mezrich was bombarded by the German army which invaded Poland, and parts of the town were destroyed by fire. The Germans entered the town on September 13. In accordance with the pre-war agreement between Germany and the U.S.S.R., Mezrich was given to the Soviet Union on September 25. However, the Red Army vacated the town two weeks later, in accordance with a further agreement with the Germans, and 2,000 Jewish young people left with the Russians. Thus, as from October 1939 Mezrich was again in German hands, under command of the Gestapo. In November the Germans imposed on the Jewish community a heavy levy, and to secure its payment arrested 20 hostages. Jews living in the main streets were expelled from their houses and Germans moved in their place. A "Judenrat" and a Jewish police were formed and many restraints were imposed. The Jews were ordered to wear an identifying mark on their clothes, a blue star of David
on a white armband, they were forbidden to use the public transport, and often were abducted in the streets for forced labor. At the same time, Jewish refugees from neighboring settlements came to Mezrich and were given shelter in public buildings of the community.

In the summer of 1940 six labor camps were set up around Mezrich, in which over 2,000 Jews from Mezrich were working. Conditions in the camps were harsh and many died of cold and hunger. Jewish manufacturing enterprises, including the bristle industry, were confiscated by the Germans and their workers were employed in exhausting tasks.

In December 1941, the Jews of Mezrich were ordered to hand in all their fur clothing. 20 Jews were murdered in the streets and another 75 in the course of house searches. In April 1942 40 Jews were murdered in the streets, following a demand to hand in 50 Kilograms of gold. It was said that Sergeant Bauer of the German gendarmerie had personally killed about 1,000 Jews of Mezrich and the neighborhood. The liquidation of the Jews of Mezrich began in August 1942. In an “action” that took place on the 25th and 26th of August, about 10,000 Jews of Mezrich were taken to the railway station and transported to the extermination camp of Treblinka. In the course of the “action” the Germans sadistically murdered babies in the eyes of their mothers. Additional 2,000 Jews were murdered in the streets and in hiding places in the course of the “action”. Local Ukrainian and Polish collaborators of the Germans took part in the killing, under command of the S.S. General Odilo Globocnik of Lublin.

On August 28,1942, a Jewish ghetto was set up at Mezrich. It comprised a number of streets and was surrounded by a fence of barbed wire. In this ghetto were concentrated all the remaining Jews of Mezrich, extremely crowded and devoid of any personal belongings. Shortly later were brought into the ghetto also Jewish refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The second “action” took place on the 6th to the 9th of October 1942. About 7,000 Jews were concentrated in the town’s square and later held for three days at the synagogue, without food or water. From there they too were deported to Treblinka.

The third and fourth “actions” followed each other on the 27th to the 29th of October and the 7th and 8th of November. The ghetto was searched from house to house, many were shot dead on the spot and others were dispatched to the extermination camps of Maidanek and Treblinka.

On December 24,1942, all the workers of the bristle industry, some 500 persons with their families, were moved to the labor camp Trawniki. Following a few months of work, they too were murdered.

The fifth “action” occurred on the 2nd and 3rd of May 1943. Some 3,000 Jews were sent to the extermination camps. 200 Jews who had been found in hiding were killed at the Jewish cemetery. A Jewish youth, Haim Fuga poured acid on the face of a German officer before being shot. In that action were shot dead also the members of the Judenrat and the Jewish police. In the 6th “action”, on the 26th of May, 700 Jews were sent to the extermination camps and the town was declared “judenrein” (free of Jews).

At this stage the Germans left the ghetto and discontinued the expulsions. This encouraged hiding Jews to return to the ghetto. Following the killing of two Germans in the town by the Polish underground, the Germans liquidated the ghetto. In the 7th “action” on the 18th and 19th of July 1943, 179 Jews who had been discovered in hiding, were taken to a place called Piaski in the outskirts of the town, shot dead and there buried.

The town was liberated by the red army on 26th June 1944. Only a small number of Jews survived and together with those who had come back from the concentration camps they constituted less than 1% of the original community.

Of all the institutions of the former flourishing community of Mezrich only the cemetery remained. In 1946 Polish residents of the town transferred the remains of the Jews who had been murdered and buried at Piaski, to the Jewish cemetery of Mezrich, where they were re-interred in a mass grave.

Siedlce

Referred to as Shedlets in Jewish sources

A city in the Masovian Voivodeship, Poland. During World War II, the city lost one-third of its population, including its entire Jewish community.

Jews lived in Siedlce from the middle of the 16th century and worked mainly as innkeepers; later they also worked as craftsmen and merchants. In 1794 a beit midrash and a house for the rabbi were built. Shortly thereafter, in 1798, the Jewish cemetery was expanded. During the 18th century there was a small Jewish hospital operating in Siedlce; a larger one was built in 1890.

The most noted rabbis of Siedlce during the mid-18th century were Rabbi Meir, the author of "Netiv Meir," and Israel Meisels, the son of the rabbi and Polish patriot Dov Berush Meisels. During the second part of the 18th century the rabbis of Siedlce would visit Warsaw in order to serve the Jews who were living there illegally (at that time Jews were prohibited from living in Warsaw). A group for the study of the Torah and Talmud was founded in Siedlce in 1839, though a Jewish high school was not opened until World War I. A Bikkur Cholim Society was founded at the end of the 19th century.

Yiddish newspapers published in Siedlce included the "Shedletser Vokhenblat," which Abraham Gilbert began publishing in 1911. Jacob Tenenboim, who lived in Siedlce between the World Wars, edited the weekly Dos Shedletser Lebn with Joshua Goldberg; they also collaborated with Gilbert. The lawyer and Zionist leader Maximilian Meir Apolinary Hartglas contributed to this newspaper.

The Jewish socialist party, the Bund, was active in Siedlce beginning around 1900. At first the Polish Socialist Party was also very influential among the Jews in Siedlce, but Zionism proved to have strongest, and most lasting, influence among the numerous and diverse Jewish political ideologies.

Many Jewish activists in Siedlce were involved in the 1905 Revolution. In 1906 the Okhrana (the czarist secret police) organized a pogrom against the Jews of Siedlce in which 26 Jews were killed and many more were injured.

In 1920, Siedlce was occupied by the Red Army. After its recapture by the Polish Army in 1921 there were a number of anti-Semitic incidents against the Jews of the city.

The Jewish population numbered 3,727 (71.5% of the total population) in 1839, 4,359 (65% of the total) in 1841, and 5,153 in 1921. Before the outbreak of World War II there were about 15,000 Jews living in Siedlce.

The German Army entered the town on September 11, 1939. In November 1939 the Jewish population was forced to pay a "contribution" fine of 100,000 zlotys. The synagogue was burned down on December 24, 1939. During 1940 about 1,000 Jews from Lodz, Kalisz, and Pabianice (cities which had been incorporated into the Third Reich) were forcibly moved to Siedlce. In March 1941 German soldiers organized a three-day aktion, during which many Jews were killed. The following August a ghetto was built, and was closed off on October 1. In January 1942 another fine of 100,000 zlotys was imposed on the Jews of the ghetto. On August 22, 1942, approximately 10,000 Jews were deported to the death camp Treblinka, where they were murdered. Approximately 500 Jews were allowed to remain in the ghetto, though another 1,500 remained there illegally. On November 25, 1942 the "small ghetto" was liquidated, and its 2,000 Jewish inmates were deported to Gęsi Borek, where the Germans concentrated everyone from the Siedlce province. Hundreds of them were shot along the way, or murdered in Gęsi Borek. Those who remained were deported within a few days after their arrival at Gęsi Borek and murdered in Treblinka. A few hundred remained in a forced labor camp near Siedlce until April 14, 1943, when they were killed.

During the deportations, hundreds of Jews were able to escape into the forests. They formed small groups and tried to organize resistance units; the majority of them were killed during the winter of 1942-1943, though Some Jewish groups continued to offer armed resistance until the fall of 1943. In January 1943 the Germans reported the capture and execution of 150 Jews in different parts of the Siedlce province.

The Jewish community of Siedlce was not rebuilt after the war. Organizations of former Jewish residents of Siedlce were established in Israel, the US, France, Belgium, and Argentina.