With the consent of King Sigismund I the Old, it was chartered by the senatorial Kryski family, who went on to own the local estates for several hundred years (until 1715). Jews began to settle in Drobin in the second half of the 17th century, when it was still a small private town. The earliest mention of an official Jewish community dates back to 1757. The local Jews were protected by the successive owners of the Drobin domain: the families Skarbek, Czetwertyński, and Dąbski. They dealt mainly with trade, crafts, and alcohol production. In 1794, after the Second Partition of Poland and the incorporation of the region to Prussia, Drobin had 230 Jewish residents (55% of the total population). Their share in the town continued to grow until the second half of the 19th century. In 1858, the community comprised ca. 840 people and constituted almost two thirds of the total population of Drobin.

The well-established Jewish community of Drobin erected a new synagogue in the years 1846–1853. The kehilla also employed a sub-rabbi. Assimilationist trends were becoming ever more visible among the local Jews, which is evidenced by the fact that two of them – Fiszel Dramin and Hersz Szmerlak – joined a Polish partisan unit during the 1863 January Uprising. The early 20th century saw the foundation of local cells of several Jewish political parties, including the socialist Bund and the Zionist Poale Zion.

The environs of Drobin became a battle zone during World War I, which caused great damage to the area and resulted in the outflow of a part of the Jewish population from the locality. After Poland regained independence, Drobin (deprived of town rights by the Russian authorities under the Partitions) had 1,100 Jewish inhabitants, constituting only 45% of the total population (1921). Among the political groups active in the locality in the interwar period were the Orthodox Agudath and Zionist organisations: the “Mizrachi” Zionist-Orthodox Association, the “Hatikvah” Zionist Association, and the Zionist Association. There were various non-partisan Jewish organisations, such as the People’s Bank (Polish: Bank Ludowy) and the Society for Granting Interest-Free Loans to Poor Merchants and Craftsmen in Drobin (Polish: Towarzystwo Udzielania Bezprocentowych Pożyczek Biednym Kupcom i Rzemieślnikom w Drobinie), both established in 1926. The locality boasted several religious schools, which were run by Yesod HaTorah, Talmud-Torah, and Agudath Israel. In the mid-1930s, Drobin saw a spike in anti-Semitic attitudes, triggered primarily by the economic crisis. Several boycotts of Jewish shops were organised, and in 1937, stones were thrown at the local synagogue.

The wartime persecutions of Jews in Drobin started as early as September 1939, when the locality was seized by the Germans. The invaders destroyed the synagogue on Yom Kippur and organised a public burning of the Torah scroll. In the autumn of 1939, after northern Mazovia had been incorporated into the Reich (Regierungsbezirk Zichenau in East Prussia), ca. 400 Jewish families arrived to Drobin, mainly refugees from neighbouring towns. In the spring of the following year, the Germans started to deport groups of Jews to Płock, Mława, Ciechanów, and Warsaw. A labour camp was set up in Drobin in the spring of 1940. Its prisoner population included both Poles and Jews. They broke stones and carried out river training works on the Krasówka (the camp was liquidated by the occupation authorities in November 1943). In March 1941, ca. 600 Jews from Drobin were sent to the camp in Działdów and later deported to Piotrków Trybunalski, where they shared the tragic fate of the inmates of the local ghetto. Only six people from this group survived the war.

In 1941, the Germans established a small ghetto on the outskirts of the town for the ca. 700 Jews remaining in Drobin. The local Judenrat (Jewish Council) was a group of randomly selected people, since the pre-war members of the community board refused to cooperate with the Nazis. A soup kitchen was opened in the district to provide aid to the poorest inhabitants. The Judenrat was forced to send a daily quota of several hundred workers to perform forced labour. They worked on road construction. The Germans began to liquidate the ghetto in December 1941. Its population was transported to the ghetto in Nowe Miasto near Płońsk. The last Jews remaining in the town were transported to the ghetto in Strzegowo in January of the following year. Only ca. 50–60 Jews from Drobin survived the Holocaust. A handful of them returned to their hometown after the war. However, they left Poland for good after five Jews, including two residents of Drobin, were murdered in Raciąż in August 1945.

The Description

The new Jewish cemetery in Drobin, located north of the Market Square in Sierpecka Street, was probably also established in the 18th century. The last recorded burial at the site took place in 1939. During World War II, the Germans devastated the cemetery, using tombstones as paving material. In 1964, a matzeva-shaped monument in memory of Drobin Jews murdered during the Holocaust was unveiled at the cemetery. In 1975, the Jewish religious community cleaned up and fenced the necropolis, which covers an area of ca. 0.5 hectare.

Description copyright owner: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews