History
Jewish community before 1989 – Polska / podkarpackie
Jews were living in Ustrzyki Dolne already at the beginning of the 17th century. In 1765 there were 162 Jews in the town, including 70 adults. There was also a rabbi. A kehilla was established before 1777.
According to Budzyński[1.1], in 1789 there were 190 Jews living in Ustrzyki. In 1799 there were 153 of them in the town, and in 1824 there were 244. In the area of a Roman Catholic parish in Jasień, which the entire town belonged to, there were 451 Jews living in 1835. At that time an independent community was established where rabbis came from the Brower family. In 1870 there were 926 people in a Jewish community in Ustrzyki Dolne. The community had its synagogue, cemetery and a school with 30 students. A kehilla employed two rabbis. In the 1880’s Jews constituted the majority of people in the town. In a total population of 1,824 people, there were 1,146 Jews. In 1893 a Credit Association was established and Millinger was its chairman. Until 1900 the community’s population increased to 3,383 people, and there were 2,091 Jews in the town itself, which was 61.1% of the total population. At that time, the community’s board of management provided for five religious schools.
At the turn of the 19th-20th century a Jew Moses Fränkel was a mayor of Ustrzyki for several years (his grandson Zygmunt Fränkel (1929–1997) was a writer, author of poems and short stories which were published in the U.S. and Israel). In 1910, 10 out of 18 members of the city council were of Jewish origin: Moses Fränkel, Leib Beer, Dawid Rodh, Szulik Zupnik, Markus Singer, Kiwa Hampel, Izrael Witman, Sender Scheindbach, Izaak Herz and Samuel Schimel.
Before the outbreak of Word War I a number of Jews in the town reached 2,600. During the war, the number decreased as in 1921 there were only 1,768 Jews living in Ustrzyki Dolne.
In the interwar period Jews still dominated in the trade, craft and petroleum industries. Poles, Ukrainians and Jews belonged to Craft Guild. Except for that, there was a Jewish Handicraftsmen Association Jad Charuzim, the chairman of which was Zugmunt Grunthaut. A Gemilut Chesed fund, a Jewish Orphans Protective Association and a Charity Society were also operating.
During the interwar era except for the main synagogue, there were two Beth Midrashes: an old one and a new one, as well as prayer houses for Hasidim, followers of tzadiks of Sadogóra and Bełz, and a synagogue of the Jad Charuzim association.
In September 1939 Ustrzyki was under Soviet occupation. Hundreds of Jews from the German occupation zone took refuge in the town. After it was taken over by Soviets on the 29th of September 1939 some Jews greeted them enthusiastically. When in June 1941 Germans took over the town again, Jews faced a rigor of Nazi lawlessness. A person to be especially afraid of was a Gestapo officer by the name of Johan Bäcker.
In May 1942 Gestapo in Ustrzyki called for all Jews in the town who were 65 or older to come to Gestapo headquarters. This is how Herman Iwler described it: On Whitsunday eve of 1942 all people over 65 years old were to come to Judenrat wearing festive clothes. Before hand, Bäcker spent a few days visiting all houses and noting down all old people. Everybody on the list was called to come in the afternoon. [...] In the evening they were taken to a prison building and some of them, due to lack of space, to the prison basement. During the night they were brought in front of Judenrat building in a market place near a court building. That is where 60 people were executed by firing squad. (The most eminent people in the town were the first ones on the list). Before the execution they were undressed. Dawid Herman (also known as Kostek) was a leader of a group of gravediggers who carried the still warm bodies to a Jewish cemetery.
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[1.1] Z. Budzyński, Ludność pogranicza polsko-ruskiego w drugiej połowie XVIII w. Stan Rozmieszczenie. Struktura wyznaniowa i etniczna, Przemyśl-Rzeszów 1993, p. 374, and J. Motylewicz, Miasta na ziemi przemyskiej i sanockiej w drugiej połowie XVII i XVIII wieku, Przemyśl-Rzeszów 1993, p. 249, for the beginning of the second half of the 18th century gives a number of 751 Jews out of 904 citizens.
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