The first Jewish settlers appeared in Chmielnik in the first half of the sixteenth century and they were probably refugees from Spain. In 1630 an independent Jewish community was established in Chmielnik and eight years later a synagogue was built. In 1655 the Jews of Chmielnik became the victims of a pogrom by the military forces under Czarnecki – more than 100 people were murdered. The seventeenth century was a time of prosperity for the Jewish community, who took over the economic position of the Arians - Polish Brethren who had been expelled from Chmielnik. In 1787 the Jewish population in the town was 782. At the end of the eighteenth century rabbi Abraham David Orbach settled down in Chmielnik and created a strong center of Hasidism. In 1876 almost the entire town was destroyed by the great fire. The records show that in 1897 the number of Jews living in the town was 5,671.
During the interwar period, specifically in 1921, the Jewish population in Chmielnik was 5,908.
In 1941 the Germans established a ghetto in Chmielnik. In October and November 1942 about 13,000 Jews were sent to Treblinka extermination camp.
Community
[Polish, gmina; Yiddish, kahal; Hebrew, kehila]
A form of organization in Jewish communities. The term has two meanings: it refers to a group of Jews having their own internal organization, including self-government and authorities; it also means the body of authorities governing this group.
Jewish law and tradition, along with government legislation, were the two main factors(...)
Extermination
Shoah [Hebrew]
The planned genocide of European Jewry perpetrated by the Nazis and based on the racist doctrine was one of the pillars of German fascism. This ideology proclaimed the need to remove Jews and other "lower" races from the German Lebensraum.
The history of the Holocaust may be broken down into three phases: 1933-39, 1939-41 and 1941-44. After Hitler came(...)
Ghetto
A designated area of a city in which Jews were permitted to live. Ghettos were sometimes surrounded by a wall and had gates that would be closed for the night, and were sometimes called "Jewish cities" or "Jewish quarters". The term "ghetto" probably was probably first used in the sixteenth century, though its origins are unclear. The most popular theory speculates(...)
Pogrom
The term that emerged to identify bloody anti-Jewish demonstrations in Russia in 1880-81, but became widespread in the world as the name for all anti-Jewish demonstrations in history. In the old Poland pogroms took place relatively rarely. The collective demonstrations against Jews in 1349 mentioned are in the Oliva Chronicle, and in 1407 by Jan Długosz. The bloodiest nature had the massacres of(...)
Rabbi
[Hebrew, rabi = my master]
A scholar who is an expert in the Scriptures and religious questions. A rabbi is a yeshiva graduate who has been issued a smicha [Hebrew, authorization] upon completion of his studies, which grants the right to teach and decide disputes of a religious nature regarding Jewish law.
A rabbi was the religious leader of a Community, and one of its officials.(...)
Synagogue
[Greek, synagogé = assembly], beit kneset [Hebrew, house of assemblies]
The building in which Jews pray, known in Polish as boznica.
The synagogue is the focus of religious life, and to some extent also for the social life in traditional Jewish communities. Its institutional origins reach back to antiquity, most probably to the period of the Babylonian captivity, when the(...)
Treblinka
Treblinka I
The labor camp Treblinka I was founded in 1941 in the forests along the Bug River, to the east of Warsaw on the rail line from Malkinia to Kosow Lacki. The prisoners were put to work in the gravel pit and the forest, and on a farm. They were primarily Poles, and also Polish Jews. During the period when Treblinka was a death camp, the percentage of Jewish prisoners in the labor(...)
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