In the mid-15th century, the settlement was granted market privileges by King Casimir IV Jagiellon at the request of the Ciołek family, the erstwhile owners of Żelechów. The privileges were later confirmed by subsequent rulers. The beginnings of Jewish settlement in the town probably date back to the turn of the 17th century. However, individual Jewish people had likely been present in the town even earlier, during the rule of the Ciołek family. Successive Jewish newcomers would sign contracts with the landowners and pay fees for settlement permits. Thanks to the rapid growth of the number of Jews living in Żelechów, an official community was founded in the town in the first half of the 17th century, followed by the construction of the first wooden synagogue. The development of the community was further boosted by the influx of Jewish refugees from the Ruthenian lands of the Crown engulfed by the Khmelnytsky Uprising. The first Jewish organisations in Żelechów were founded in the 18th century – the Psalm Recitation Society (Polish: Stowarzyszenie Recytowania Psalmów) and the Union of Jewish Tailors (Polish: Związek Krawców Żydowskich). The town became one of the most important centres of the Hasidic movement, inhabited by such prominent tzaddikim as Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev. At the end of the 18th century, Żelechów had 1,500 Jewish inhabitants, which constituted over 70% of the total population. Their main occupations were trade, crafts, leasing, inn-keeping, and transport.

In the period of the Kingdom of Poland (Congress Poland), the Jews of Żelechów owned a wooden synagogue, a mikveh, a hospital, a school, and a cemetery. In 1821, the community had ca. 1,000 members (53% of the total population) and continued to grow, reaching 5,000 members (70%) at the end of the century. The town gained fame for its numerous shoemaking workshops. There were also several Jewish-owned industrial plants: a sugar factory, joinery, brewery, sparkling water bottling plant, and distillery. Jews from Żelechów lived mainly around the Market Square and in the neighbouring streets. A new brick synagogue was built in the town towards the end of the century, replacing the former building destroyed in one of the fires plaguing the densely built, wooden town. The same period saw growing popularity of various Jewish political movements and organisations, including the Zionists (Poale Zion) and the Orthodox Agudath.

In the interwar period, Jews still constituted more than half of the total population (5,500 of all 9,500 inhabitants in 1939). They actively participated in the social life of Żelechów and were well-represented in the Municipal Council. The town boasted numerous religious and public schools, as well as many Jewish political movements and youth organisations. A large group of local Jews made a living from ritual slaughter and cattle trade. The period also saw the foundation of Goldberg’s printing house in Żelechów. At the end of the 1930s, a wave of anti-Semitic incidents swept the town.

The Germans seized Żelechów in September 1939 and set fire to the local synagogue just a few days later. In November of the same year, transports of displaced Jews from Łaskarzew, Maciejowice, Uchacze, Sobolew, Kalisz, Lusławice, and Warsaw arrived in Żelechów. As a result, the number of Jewish residents of the town increased to 13,000. Groups of young Jews were sent to forced labour camps. In October 1940, an open ghetto was established in Żelechów, fenced off and closed a year later. The district was administered by the Judenrat (Jewish Council) and a unit of Jewish police. The ghetto prisoners were decimated by a typhus epidemic. In September 1942, the Germans liquidated the ghetto, shotting ca. 300 people on the spot and rushing all remaining Jews to the train station in Sobolew, from where they were transported to the death camp in Treblinka.

In the autumn of 1944, after the front had passed through the town, individual Jews who survived the Holocaust began to come back to Żelechów. A branch of the Jewish Committee was formed in the town, with 132 people registered with it in December of the same year. The committee organised exhumations of the bodies of Jews murdered by the Germans in the vicinity of Żelechów and moved them to the Jewish cemetery in Reymonta Street. The vast majority of Jews residing in Żelechów right after the war left the town in the following years.

The first Jewish cemetery in Żelechów was established in the 18th century near the old synagogue, between today’s streets Piłsudskiego, Staszica, 15 Pułku Piechoty "Wilków," and Kościuszki. Tzaddik Aharon Hopstein of Zelechov was laid to rest in the necropolis in 1776. An ohel was erected over his grave. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Austrian partition authorities closed the necropolis for sanitary reasons and ordered the Jewish community to open a new burial site outside the urban area. After World War II, the old cemetery and the square left behind by the demolished synagogue were levelled and developed with a municipal park with a playground. No tombstones have survived in the necropolis.

The Description

The new Jewish cemetery in Żelechów was established in 1802 on a large hill at the intersection of today’s Chłopickiego Street and Reymonta Street, south-west of the town. More than 100 tombstones have been preserved on the premises of the necropolis, which covers over a hectare and is overgrown with trees. Most of the tombstones located in the section closest to Chłopickiego Street are made of granite blocks and bear simple inscriptions, mostly devoid of symbolic relief decorations. This is probably the oldest part of the necropolis. The central section of the cemetery was stripped of almost all matzevot during the German occupation and in the post-war period. Bases of broken tombstones can be seen here and there among the grass overgrowing the site. Around a dozen sandstone matzevot have been preserved on the slope of the hill on the side of Reymonta Street. They are in good condition and bear legible inscriptions. Their pediments are decorated with ornaments typical of Jewish sepulchral art.

During the occupation, the necropolis served as the burial site of victims of German terror. It was also a Nazi execution site – in February 1943, several dozen Jewish craftsmen remaining in the town after the liquidation of the ghetto were murdered in the cemetery. After 1945, the remains of Jews buried in individual graves scattered around the entire county were exhumed and moved to the necropolis in Żelechów.

In the years 2014–2015, the cemetery grounds were cleaned up and fenced. The initiative received the support of rabbis Chaim Hopstein from the UK and David Singer from the United States. A monument and an information board commemorating several centuries of the history of the Żelechów Jewish community were placed at the site. At the turn of 2020, an ohel was erected over the graves of Tzaddik Aharon Yechiel Hosptein of the Kozhnitz dynasty, called Ariele Kozhnitzer (he died of typhus in the ghetto in 1942), and Rabbi Aharon HaKohen (turn of the 19th century). The cemetery is also the resting place of Moshe Eliakim Goldberg (d. 1901), a tzaddik of Żelechów and son of the Holy Jew of Peshischa.

Właściciel praw autorskich do opisu: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN.