Czestochowa

 

General

       Czestochowa is located about 125 miles southwest of Warsaw.  The Jewish community was founded in 1765.  The community grew to 500 by 1808, and fifty years later was about 3,000 (34.5 of the total population).  At the outbreak of the war, the Jewish population was about 29,000, almost 30 of the population.

       The German Army entered the city on September 3, 1939.  On the next day, as a portent of what was to come, a pogrom was organized in which 300 Jews were killed.  The ghetto was created on April 9, 1941.  A large influx of Jews from surrounding areas increased the population of the ghetto to about 48,000 at the time of its liquidation.  The liquidation began on September 22, 1942, and by October 8, 1942, about 40,000 persons had been transported to the Treblinka extermination camp.  After the liquidation, about 5,000 persons remained in a labor camp created in a portion of the former ghetto.

       The postcard below (postmarked 1915) depicts the Great Synagogue of Czestochowa which was destroyed by the Nazis on Christmas Day, 1939.  The site of the synagogue now houses a concert hall.

Image

References

Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-Rom Edition, Keter Publishing

Carole Herselle Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe, P. 80 & 128

Gutman, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, P. 336-38

Mogilanski, The Ghetto Anthology, 114

       


Copyright © 1998-99 Edward Victor