The earliest statistics concerning the Jewish population come from the period of the Kingdom of Poland (Congress Poland). In 1821, ca. 140 Jews lived in the town (28% of the total population). Over the following decades of the 19th century, their number was systematically increasing: in 1827, 332 out of the 785 inhabitants of Białobrzegi were Jews (42%) and, in 1862 – 549 out of 932 (59%).

Initially, the Jews of Białobrzegi belonged to the religious community in Przytyk. They only established their own separate kehilla in 1861. That year, a wooden synagogue was built in the town. The Jewish cemetery was likely founded at the same time. The synagogue building also housed a cheder and a mikveh. Most of the stalls and workshops in Białobrzegi were owned by Jewish merchants and craftsmen.

In 1919, after Poland regained independence, Białobrzegi was inhabited by ca. 3,600 people, 2,200 of whom were Jews (61%). Over the subsequent years, the Jewish population was shrinking in size. It was due to a large wave of migrations to bigger cities, such as Radom and Warsaw, as well as emigration overseas or to Palestine. In 1939, more than 1,800 Jews lived in Białobrzegi (60% of the total population), including 180 merchants and tradesmen, 328 craftsmen, 141 blue-collar workers, seven representatives of free professions, and 28 unemployed.

During the period of the Second Polish Republic, the local Jewish community supported the Zionist movement (Poale Zion), the socialists (the Bund), and the Orthodoxy (Agudath). The local activists operated within party structures based in Radom. Białobrzegi itself did not have any local branches of Jewish political parties until June 1939, when a cell of the “Bund” All-Jewish Workers’ Union in Poland was founded in the town.

In the interwar period, the economic activity of the Jews of Białobrzegi focused primarily on crafts, trade, and services. In 1932, there were 228 artisan workshops and service points in the town, 101 of which were Jewish-owned. Jews ran 18 out of the 19 tailoring workshops operating in the town and six out of the 11 existing bakeries.

Białobrzegi was seized by the Nazi troops in September 1939. The Germans immediately started to persecute local Jews, imposing a high contribution on the community and instating a forced labour regime. The local Judenrat (Jewish Council) was headed by merchant Abram Goldberg. A Jewish police force was also set up in the town. In the spring of 1941, the Germans established an open ghetto in Białobrzegi. Located west of Krakowska Street, its area encompassed the entire western part of the town. Due to the difficult housing conditions in Białobrzegi, some Polish families were initially allowed to remain within the perimeter of the Jewish quarter. The district was eventually closed off in January of the following year. Its population also included Jews displaced from other localities: Przytyk, Stromiec, Wyśmierzyce, Warka, Mogielnica, Grójec, Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą, and Jedlińsk. In May and August 1941, groups of Jews from Warsaw were also deported to Białobrzegi. The Jewish Social Self-Help was established inside the ghetto. It ran a soup kitchen which served 600 modest meals a day, mostly free of charge. There was also a fever hospital in the district, founded in cooperation with the Judenrat.

The Germans liquidated the ghetto in the autumn of 1942. They gathered ca. 3,500 people in the Market Square and put them on transports to Dobieszyn. From there, the Jews were taken to the Treblinka extermination camp, where they were killed in gas chambers. A group of ca. 200 young Jews earlier selected by the Germans or employed outside the ghetto was confined in three houses near the Market Square during the liquidation action. They were ordered to clean up the ghetto and work for the security police. Most of them were transported to the ammunition factory in Skarżysko-Kamienna in December 1942 and later sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Several Jews from Białobrzegi survived the war – they were prisoners of labour camps, including those in Sucha and Pionki.

Description

The Jewish cemetery in Białobrzegi was probably established sometime after 1857. It was located in the south-western part of the town, at today’s Rzemieślnicza Street, on a 0.25 hectare plot. However, only the southern border of the original cemetery is visible today. It runs along Rzemieślnicza Street. The original area has been partially developed with buildings, so the fences on the northern and eastern side of the cemetery mark its modern, and not historic borders.

During World War II, the cemetery and its surroundings were used by the Germans to carry out executions. Many Jews were shot and buried at the site. After the war, traces of a mass grave with ca. 120 bodies were discovered in the cemetery. The grave probably holds the bodies of patients of the fever hospital killed during the liquidation action. The cemetery itself was destroyed by the Germans, who tore most of the matzevot out of the ground. The site further fell into decline in the period of the People’s Republic of Poland, when a road and residential buildings were constructed in its immediate vicinity. There are no tombstones left at the site.

In the 21st century, the cemetery area was cleaned up with the help of the Polish Union of Jewish Students (Polish: Polska Unia Studentów Żydowskich). In 2017, the premises were fenced. The new cemetery wall has an entrance gate decorated with stylised menorot. The restoration of the necropolis was funded out by Morris and Arlene Goldfarb from the United States – descendants of one of the Holocaust Survivors from Białobrzegi – and the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland. The foundation placed a plaque at the site to commemorate the Jews living in Białobrzegi until 1942, the victims of the Holocaust, and Holocaust Survivor Aron Goldfarb (2 February 1923 – 8 October 2012).

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