History

Marta Kubiszyn /

In 1578 King Stefan Batory allowed Jews to settle down in the royal town of Augustow. He granted them the permission for unlimited trade and craft. The permission included the right to sell alcoholic beverages.

It is supposed the first Jewish settlers came into the town a year before or, according to some sources – as early as 1564. . Those days they established the first Jewish colony in the Suwalki Region (Suwalszczyzna).

The oldest preserved sources confirm the presence of the Jews in Augustow, who mostly dealt with fishing and trade as from 1630. An independent Jewish community that owned a wooden synagogue and mikvah was established in 1674. In the 18^th century Augustow became the seat of the “county kehilla” consisting of few surrounding towns and villages.

In the mid-1760s there were 239 Jews in Augustow whose main occupation was hewing forest, timber floating from Gdansk and trading. Although the Russian government forbade Jewish from settling in the Polish-Russian-border town, that was in force from 1823 to 1862, the number of Jewish population kept increasing during the first half of the 19^th century so that in 1860 it reached 45% of the total population in the town.

In 1840 an impressive classical synagogue called the Great Synagogue (Hebrew: Beit ha-Knesset ha-Gadol) was erected in the corner of ulica Polna and ulica Zygmuntowska. There was also another synagogue, that had been built a bit earlier, operating in the intersection of ulica Zygmuntowska and ulica Szkolna. At the beginning of the 20^th century, apart from the two previously mentioned synagogues at ulica Zygmuntowska there were three others that operated in the town – the first one was situated near ulica Mostowa (near the present-day “Albatros” restaurant), the second one – between ulica 3 Maja and ulica ks. Skorupki and the third one, erected in between 1925 – 1928 and called after its founders “Jatke Kalniz Beit Midrasz”, located at ulica Zabia, on the site where these days you can find the right wing of the Internal Revenue Service building.

In the 1890s small groups of supporters of various Hasidic factions started to emerge in Augustow. Each of them had their own house of prayer.

At the beginning of the 19^th century, the Augustow Jews dealt mainly with craft (food proce

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Local history

Marta Kubiszyn /

The history of the settlement in Augustów dates back to the period of early Middle Ages when the region was inhabited by the Jaćwing tribes. From the 1280s to the 1420s, after the extermination of the Jaćwing tribes, the territory remained a subject of litigation between the Order of Teutonic Knights, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Mazovian dukes. In 1422, according to the terms of the Treaty of Melno, the Augustów land was annexed to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. A stabilized political situation led to the increased number of settlers and economic growth in this area in the 16^th century.

According to the preserved sources, in 1496 there was a customs house, in a place of the town, which charged a fare for crossing the river ]. In 1546, King Zygmunt August made a decision to establish a settlement on the Netta River, which was to be named after him “Zygmuntowo”. Yet, the settlement was chartered only as late as 1550. In May 1557, the settlement was granted town privileges under Magdeburg Law and was named Augustów. Roads and streets, nearly 600 building parcels as well as the main square and another, smaller square called “wołowy”, were all marked out at this time. The King granted a right to two annual fairs and two weekly markets as well as a privilege of free fishing, while in 1564 – he issued an additional privilege which granted the citizens concession to brew beers and mead as well as to distil vodka. The rich royal town, situated at a trade route leading from Lithuania and Byelorussia to Prussia, Greater Poland, Cracow and Warsaw, was inhabited largely by Polish, Lithuanian and Byelorussian craftsmen and developed rapidly as far as economy and demography were concerned. Although the preserved sources indicate that Jews lived in Augustów from as late as the 1660s, it is supposed that a small group of Jewish settlers came to live here at least in 1577, or earlier – in 1564.

The rapid development of the centre was impeded when the Tatars burned it down in 1656. During the Northern Wars  in 1704 – 1721, the town was devastated and plundered several times by the Swedish, Brandenburg, Saxon and Russian armies. The further collapse of the town in the second half of the 17th century was also caused by an epidemic, which decimated the local population in 1710. Only in the second half of the 18th cen

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Summary

Location

izrael.badacz.org

The town of Augustów is the seat of August County in Podlaskie Province. It has 30,000 inhabitants (1998). It is located on the Augustów Plain, on the Netta River, at the western periphery of the Augustów Primeval Forest and is surrounded by the Necko, Białe and Sajno Lakes.

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