Just like in the case of the town of Granica, now a district of Gniewoszów (founded in 1735 by the Myszkowski family), it was most likely established with the aim of attracting Jewish settlers to the estate. Both settlements were favourably situated by the route leading from Warsaw to Lublin and reaching Ruthenia. The Jewish newcomers enjoyed the protection of the estate owners – initially the Gniewosz family and later the Szembek, Mycielski, and Działyński families. A wooden synagogue was founded in the town sometime before 1748; another one, also made of wood, was erected at the turn of the 20th century. The Jews of Granica also received permission to build their own synagogue, with the works on the temple concluded in 1751. In the last period of the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, there were ca. 250 Jews (over 15% of the total population) living in the Oleksów Parish, which also included Gniewoszów.

The Partitions of Poland brought a period of dynamic development to the two neighbouring communities. In 1827, over 650 Jews lived in Gniewoszów (66% of the total population) and just under 850 in Granica (82%). In 1870, Gniewoszów and Granica were deprived of town rights and merged by the Russian administration. In 1908, the tsarist officials split the two Jewish communities, but they once again started to be treated as a single body with the seat in Gniewoszów after the area was incorporated into reborn Poland. In the years 1918–1939, the community comprised Jews living in the villages of Gniewoszów, Granica, Sieciechów, and Garbatka. It had a total of over 2,500 members in 1925. According to the 1931 census, the Gniewoszów community owned two prayer houses, a mikveh, and two cemeteries: the dead from Gniewoszów were buried in the cemetery at Oleksowska Street, while the Jews from Granica used the necropolis at Lubelska Street.

During the interwar period, Gniewoszów – having fully absorbed Granica – retained a traditional model of economy based on trade and crafts with a predominantly Jewish population – at the beginning of the 1920s, the community had 1,200 members and accounted for 65% of all inhabitants. Until the outbreak of World War II, most of the artisan workshops in the town were Jewish-owned. Many Jews worked as coopers, shoemakers, weavers, tailors. They also ran groat mills, bakeries, carpentry workshops, and a soda water factory. The local stalls and shops sold cereals, poultry, groceries, iron, enamelled dishes, and textile accessories. The Jewish quarter was located in the area of the Market Square.

The Jewish population of Gniewoszów was steadily shrinking during the entire interwar period: in 1933, the Kozienice District Office estimated that the Jewish community still had more than 2,100 members, but just before the outbreak of World War II there were less than 1,600 Jews living in the town. The community board was dominated by Zionist activists, with Orthodox Jews having much less influence.

At the beginning of World War II, in September 1939, Gniewoszów was captured by the German army. The local synagogue and both cemeteries were devastated soon afterwards. The life of the Jewish community was controlled by the Judenrat (Jewish Council) with the seat in Radom. In December 1941, the Germans established an open ghetto in Granica. The bulk of its population comprised Jews displaced from other towns. In November of the following year, the Germans transported ca. 6,000 Jews from the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp (most of them via the ghetto in Zwoleń, and a group of 1,000 people directly to the camp). In September 1945, five of the few surviving Gniewoszów Jews who had returned to their hometown were murdered by unidentified, unpunished perpetrators. The building of the former synagogue in Gniewoszów was reconstructed after the war and became the headquarters of the Voluntary Fire Service.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Gniewoszów is located ca. 200 metres north-west of the Market Square, in Zacisze Street. Surrounded with a modern fence, it occupies a trapezoidal plot with an area of 0.37 hectare. The exact date of the establishment of the necropolis remains unknown, but it must have been founded sometime in the mid-18th century, at the time of the construction of the first synagogue and the operation of a subkehilla in Gniewoszów. In the interwar period, the cemetery was fenced with barbed wire. The last burial at the site took place in September 1945. The cemetery was ultimately destroyed in the first years after the war, when inhabitants of Gniewoszów and surrounding villages dismantled the fence and used tombstones as building material in construction works. An investigation into the matter was carried out in 1949. All above-ground traces of the cemetery were obliterated in the process of devastation. Its area was used as a pasture. In 1964, the local administrative authorities issued a decision to officially close the necropolis.

In 2014, the cemetery wall was partially reconstructed thanks to the efforts of the Koret Foundation and the descendants of the Cajfinger and Ajdelman families. The works were carried out in cooperation with the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage. The border of the cemetery on the unfenced stretch was marked with a row of stones. A plaque with a brief outline of the history of the Jews of Gniewoszów and Granica was placed on one of the pillars of the entrance gate. In addition, 15 recovered tombstones in various states of preservation were embedded in the wall. In July 2019, a ceremony was held at the cemetery to unveil a plaque commemorating the victims of the 1945 massacre. It was attended by several Jews hailing from Gniewoszów and their families.

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