The Jewish Community of Zychlin

Zychlin

Yiddish: זשיכלין; Russian: Жихлин; Spelling variations: Zakhlin, Zekhlin, Zykhlin, Zshikhlin

Town in Lodz province, near Kutno, Poland.

Around the 21st Century

The town’s abandoned Jewish cemetery located on Lukasinskiego Street  deteriorated.  In the 1990’s, after the fall of communism, it was fenced in under the initiative of the local government.

More recently several monuments were erected from preserved fragments of tombstones.  The collective grave of Holocaust victims was marked, as well as the burial place of the Hassidic Rebbe Shmuel Abba son of Rav Zelig.

History

Jews first settled in Zychlin at the beginning of the 18th century, and by 1765 there were 311 Jews paying a poll tax.  In 1780, following a special permit issued by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Gniezno, a wooden synagogue was erected.  In 1880 it was replaced by a stone building. The town also had a number of shtiebels (informal places for communal prayer).

There were no restrictions on Jewish settlement and the members of the community engaged in crafts and trade.

With the partition of Poland in 1795, Zychlin became part of the Russian Empire.

The Jews numbered 457 (57% of the total population) in 1808; 782 (61%) in 1827; 1,062 (66%) in 1857; 2,268 (47%) in 1897; and 2,701 (40%) in 1921.

During the second half of the 19th century the hasidic movement established itself in the town. Shmuel Abba son of Rav Zelig (1809-1879) was the founder of the Zychlin hassidic dynasty and revered as a miracle worker.

In 1918, at the end of World War I, Poland regained its independence and Zychlin became part of the Second Polish Republic.

Between the two world wars the Zionist movement took root and a number of the Zychlin Jews joined the third Aliyah movement. Some members of the community emigrated to Canada, Australia, and the US where they established a Landsmanschaft (mutual aid society of immigrants).

About 3,500 Jews lived in Zychlin in 1939, constituting approximately 50% of the total population. 

The Holocaust

Germany began its invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and on September 17 Zychlin fell to the Nazi forces.  On the following day all the Jewish males were driven to a village 15 miles away, but after being detained in a church for three days were released. In April 1940 the Polish and Jewish intellectuals, including many teachers, were arrested and deported to German concentration camps, and the number of Jews remaining was reduced to 2,800.

A ghetto was established in July 1940 on a swampy area on the outskirts of the town. The ghetto population increased to 3,500, when a group of Jews deported from a nearby area arrived in Zychlin. The ghetto was not fenced in, so that there was some contact with the outside world. The German police could easily be bribed to facilitate some trade.

Members of the Judenrat and certain other Jews were allowed to leave the ghetto during the day. Labor detachments had to be supplied by the Judenrat almost daily. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee supplied relief to the poor and the refugees, but no public kitchen could be organized, and as a result of malnutrition a typhoid epidemic broke out. The ghetto regime became more restrictive in 1942 and those who attempted to escape from its confines were killed. In February 1942 the German police surrounded and invaded the ghetto, killing hundreds of Jews in the streets, among them most of the Judenrat members and their families. The Jewish police were also liquidated in this Aktion. On Purim (March 3) 1942, the Jews were assembled in the marketplace and 3,200 persons were loaded on carts; those too weak to climb up on the carts were shot on the spot. The entire Jewish population of Zychlin was thus dispatched to the Chelmno death camp and murdered.

 

PostwarAfter the end of World War II the Jewish community of Zychlin was not renewed.

In 1974 the Memorial Book of Zychlin edited by Ami Shamir was published in Tel Aviv by the Zychliner Organization of Israel and America.