First Jews started to settle in Siedlce in the middle of the 16th century. A synagogue was built in 1794. 3723 Jews lived in Siedlce in 1839, which made up 71% of the whole population and in 1858 there were already as many as 5153 Jews in the town. In 1859, a new synagogue was erected. In 1890, a huge Jewish hospital was opened. Two Jewish newspapers were published : “Szedlesker Wochnblat” and "Dos Szedlesker Lebn".
During the 1905-1907 revolution in Siedlce, which had been annexed by Russians, a bloody pacification action of the Jewish people was carried out by the troops of the Russian Empire army. Before this, the secret political police Okhrana had failed to provoke the Polish community of Siedlce to attack the Jews who were accused of some revolutionary activity that was detrimental to the state.
During the 1906 pacification action that lasted for a few days, between 26 (according to the police) to 100 (according to unofficial sources) people were killed, several dozen were wounded and several hundred arrested. Many families were left with no roof over their heads. About 40 shops and many flats were plundered. As the Jewish historian, I. Kaspi wrote, there were signs of sympathy coming from everywhere right after the pogrom. Especially warm was the reaction of the Polish society and press. All newspapers called for fund raising and some of them even managed to raise quite big amounts of money. In the Russian governmental press an announcement was published that expressed thanks from the Warsaw governor Skałon to lieutenant colonel Tichonovsky, the commander of the pacification action.
In 1921, there were 2 synagogues, 3 houses of prayer and 20 Hasidic prayer facilities in the city.
In the interwar period, 14 685 Jews lived in Siedlce in 1921, constituting 48% of all inhabitants.
During World War II, Siedlce was taken by the German army in September 1939. In the night from 24 to 25 December 1939, the Germans burnt the synagogue. In 1940, Jews from Kalisz were deported to Siedlce. In August 1941, the Germans established a ghetto where they locked over twelve thousand Jews.
In August 1942, the Germans moved about ten thousand Jews to the extermination camp in Treblinka and the rest of them were left at the forced labor camps. All Jews had been executed at the local Jewish cemetery until November 1942.
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(...)
Press
The origins of the Jewish press are linked to the Haskalah movement in the eighteenth century. In a short period, from 1800 to 1825, the first Jewish periodicals appeared in the Polish lands: Tsir neeman (Hebrew, Loyal Messenger, 1814), Olat shabat (Hebrew, Sabbath Offering, 1817-24), Bikurey ha-itim (Hebrew, Contemporary Review, 1820), Dostrzegacz Nadwislanski - Der Beobachter an der Weichsel (Polish(...)
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(...)
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(...)
Warsaw
[Yiddish, Varshe, Varsha, Varshoy]
The earliest Jewish settlement in Warsaw dates back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the first half of the fifteenth century, Warsaw had a "Jewish Street", synagogue and cemetery. The first mention of Jews being expelled from the city dates back to 1483. In 1527, Sigismund I the Old confirmed Warsaw's de non tolerandis Judaeis privilege,(...)
The Administrator has made all possible efforts to present the content accuratly and up-to-date in a way that does not infringe upon the rights of third parties, including copyrights, but cannot guarantee it. Therefore erroneous information on the website may not be the basis for claims. If you have any questions, please contact us at the following e-mail address:
sztetl@jewishmuseum.org.pl
