In the first quarter of the 19th century, the several hundred years old village transformed into an important industrial centre specialising in textiles. Its significance found its confirmation in the charter granted to Zduńska Wola by Alexander I Romanov in 1825. Article 5 of the document included provisions concerning the Jewish population of the town. It strictly delimited the area which could be settled by Jews – the streets Stefana and Ogrodowa and the square near the Market Square (where a synagogue had been erected two years earlier). However, the Jews living in Zduńska Wola before it was chartered were allowed to keep properties situated in other parts of the new town. Local Jews were to work as factory owners, craftsmen, and traders. The owner of the town was obliged to grant the Jewish community a perpetual, free lease on a plot of land for the purposes of establishing a cemetery. It was decided that the number of Jews living in Zduńska Wola could not exceed one tenth of the Christian population.

In 1828, an official Jewish community was founded in Zduńska Wola (it remained under the jurisdiction of the kehilla in Łask for the first two years of its existence), comprising Jews living in the town and in neighbouring villages. In 1858, the old wooden synagogue was replaced by a brick one. The building was expanded at the end of the 19th century and destroyed by the Germans during World War II. In 1939, the community employed 12 clerks. The rabbinate consisted of the chief rabbi, four sub-rabbis and several other officials, including a cantor and four shochetim. The community’s property included the great synagogue, a smaller synagogue, ritual baths, poultry slaughterhouses, a residential house, a cemetery, a pre-burial house, and squares adjacent to the synagogue.

At the beginning of the 20th century, several Jewish primary schools were established in Zduńska Wola. The school located in the municipal park, founded in 1926, was headed by Estera Lenc from Lviv. One of the teachers working in the facility was Eliezer Kaplan, who went on to become Israel’s first Minister of Finance. A Talmud-Torah religious school operated in Zduńska Wola, attended by over 250 boys in 1925. A Beit Yaakov religious school for girls was established in the town in the interwar period.

The rapidly growing Jewish community of Zduńska Wola boasted 6,000 members at the beginning of the 20th century (ca. 30% of the total population), with the number reaching 8,500 (48%) on the eve of World War I. In the interwar period, the share of Jews in the population of Zduńska Wola oscillated around 36–38% (8,300 in 1939). The Jews were the dominant force in the local economic life, working as merchants, craftsmen, and industrialists.

In the autumn of 1939, the town was incorporated into the Third Reich as part of Reichsgau Wartheland. The size of the Jewish population of Zduńska Wola fluctuated significantly in the years 1940–1942. Several hundred people most likely fled to the General Government or farther to the east. An unknown number of Jews was deported to labour camps. At the same time, ca. 3,000 Jews came to Zduńska Wola from Sieradz, Pabianice, Kalisz, Poddębice, Szadek, Widawa, Burzenin, Klonowa, Majaczewice, and other localities. Following their arrival, the number of Jews living in the town increased, ranging from 10,000 to 12,000 people in the years 1941–1942. This made Zduńska Wola one of the biggest concentrations of Jews in Reichsgau Wartheland.

The Germans began preparations for the establishment of the local ghetto in the first days of the occupation, though the exact date of its formation has not yet been established. It probably happened in May or June 1940. The area of the ghetto encompassed the western and southern sides of Wolności Square. It could be accessed through five gates guarded by the Jewish police from the inside and by the Ordnungspolizei from the outside. As was the case in other German ghettos, the Jewish quarter in Zduńska Wola was administered by a Judenrat (Jewish Council). Its president was Dr Jakub Lemberg. In 1940, he opened an agricultural farm (so-called Ackerbaufarm) on the premises of the ghetto, in Ogrodowa Street. It employed young people between the ages of 17 and 21 (about 50 in total) and provided the inhabitants of the district with vegetables and milk. The prisoners of the closed district were used as forced labour around the town, for example at the construction of a shooting range at the municipal stadium. Some of the Jews worked outside the ghetto, for example in peat extraction near the Paprocki Forest. The liquidation of the ghetto in Zduńska Wola was preceded by the selection and deportation of ca. 400 people (mainly craftsmen) to the Łódź Ghetto at the end of June 1942. In late August of the same year, the Germans transported over 8,000 inhabitants of the Jewish district to the extermination camp in Chełmno nad Nerem (Kulmhof) and about 1,000 to the ghetto in Łódź.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Zduńska Wola was established immediately after the location of the town. It is situated at today’s Kacza Street, in the western part of the town, on a plot covering around two hectares. The oldest matzevot with legible inscriptions date back to 1832, and the last burial at the site took place in 1964. The necropolis is currently out of use. It suffered considerable damages at the hands of the Germans during World War II and continued to deteriorate after 1945.

The necropolis is currently densely overgrown with old trees and surrounded with a wall. About 3,000 matzevot have been preserved at the site, half of them overturned or broken. The tombstones date back to the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century and are made of granite, limestone, and sandstone, some also have elements carved in white marble. They bear inscriptions in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, and German. In 1994, a monument was erected at the site of the mass grave of over 200 people killed by the Germans during the liquidation of the ghetto, commemorating all Zduńska Wola Jews murdered in the Holocaust. In 2007, a new gate was built at the entrance to the necropolis. It is an exact copy of the first cemetery gate and is adorned with information boards including a brief overview of the history of the site (with inscriptions in Polish, English, Hebrew, and Yiddish). The restored necropolis presently remains under the care of the YACHAD Historical Society (Polish: Towarzystwo Historyczne YACHAD), the Organisation of Former Residents of Zduńska Wola in Israel, local government authorities, and the Museum of History of the Town of Zduńska Wola (Polish: Muzeum Historii Miasta Zduńska Wola). An annual open day has been organised at the cemetery every August since 2010.

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