The First to be Destroyed: The Jewish Community of Kleczew and the Beginning of the Final Solution (Judaism and Jewish Life) - Hardcover

Medykowski, Witold; Glowacka-Penczynska, Anetta; Kawski, Tomasz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1618112848 ISBN 13: 9781618112842

Publisher: Academic Studies Press, 2015

Synopsis

The Jewish community of the city of Kleczew came into existence in the sixteenth century. It remained large and strong throughout the next four hundred years, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it constituted 40-60% of the total population. The German army entered Kleczew on September 15, 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. The communities of Kleczew and the vicinity were among the first Jewish collectives in Europe to be totally destroyed. The events presented in this book reveal that the organization of deportations and the methods of mass murder conducted in this district, by Kommando Lange, served as a model that would be applied later in the death camps during the mass extermination of Polish and European Jewry. If so, it was in the woods near Kleczew that the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” began.

About this title

About the Author

Anetta Głowacka-Penczyńska has been working at the University of Bydgoszcz since 1998 and defended her PhD dissertation in 2006. Since 2007, she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural History, Institute of History and International Relations at the Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz.

Tomasz Kawski was born in 1969 in Włocławek, Poland. He studied law at Mikołaj Kopernik University in Toruń and social science and history at Kazimierz Wielki University (UKW) in Bydgoszcz, receiving a PhD in history in 2001. Since 1994, he works as a Researcher in the Institute of History and International Relationships (IHiSM) at UKW in Bydgoszcz.

Witold W. Mędykowski, born in Lublin, is a historian and political scientist, and a senior specialist at the Yad Vashem Archives. He is a graduate of the University of Life Sciences in Lublin and Tel Aviv University. He received his PhD in political science at the Institute of Political Studies ― Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw and his PhD in Jewish studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published numerous articles and books on the Holocaust, Polish-Jewish relations and ethnic conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe.

Tuvia Horev (PhD, MPH, DMD) has served in high-ranking positions in the Israeli healthcare system, as well as in research institutes and academia. His latest executive position was as Senior Deputy Director General for Strategic and Economic Planning in the Ministry of Health. Since November 2014, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Systems Management at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. As a descendant of a family that lived in Kleczew, Poland for generations, Professor Horev’s contribution to the current project has been given out of a personal commitment to promote historical research on Jewish life in Eastern Greater Poland.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

As the son of a woman born in Kleczew to a family that had lived there for generations, I could not help but imbibe the reality of Kleczew with my mother’s milk. My family had never been nostalgic for Kleczew, and certainly I had never heard any stories about how things had been back there. My grandparents had immigrated to pre-state Israel with their two daughters in July 1939, less than sixty days before the Germans invaded Poland. In doing so, they had left much of their family behind. Nearly all of these relatives perished very shortly afterward, in the Holocaust.

Born in Israel as a member of a new generation that had never smelled the stench of exile and experienced its horrors, I understood nothing about the immensity of the trauma that nestled deep in my grandparents’ hearts. I never even felt the need―I admit this in shame―to ask them what they felt or to ask them to share their memories with me, confide in me, or just tell me who those relatives back there had been.

A few years ago, however, I came across an excerpt of the testimony of a Polish veterinarian, Dr. Mieczysław Sękiewicz. Sękiewicz had testified to a Polish judicial committee on October 27, 1945, and again in 1968, to researchers from a regional committee in Poznań for the investigation of Nazi crimes, about a ghastly crime that had taken place in the Wygoda forest: the massacre of thousands of Jews who had been taken there from several communities in Konin sub-district and the Warthegau (the section of Poland that Nazi Germany had annexed) including Kleczew. As I read Sękiewicz’s account, I realized that this events occurred very close to Kleczew. From that moment on, I felt it my duty to ensure that the memory of the Kleczew’s community, to which I trace my ancestry (I was named after Tobiasz Rachwalski, born in Kleczew), would not end with that horror. To honor this pledge, I decided to facilitate a historical study that would explore the development of the Jewish community of Kleczew in order to seek lessons that might help to prevent such atrocities in the future.

Before beginning the study, I approached the cultural attaché at the Polish Embassy in Israel for assistance in locating appropriate and skillful researchers in Poland. The attaché and his staff responded in a most useful way, by putting me in touch with the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, which in turn was very helpful in finding Polish researchers and liaising with them. An agreement with two researchers in Poland (Anetta Głowacka-Pęnczyńska and Tomasz Kawski) was signed first. Dr. Witold Mędykowski of Israel joined the team later. Dr. Mędykowski contributed much to the development of the research, chiefly in matters relating to the Holocaust era and the final shaping of the manuscript. I fervently thank these researchers for their professionalism and the enormous investment they made in gathering the material, analyzing it, and placing it in writing. I am also very grateful to the Polish Embassy in Israel and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw for their assistance.

The research team systematically collected findings from many archives in various countries, retraced the history of the Kleczew community from its inception to its extinction, and analyzed the findings thoroughly in view of historical events that unfolded concurrently in Poland and in Europe at large.

At the time I began the project, I could not have guessed one of its revelations: that was evidently in Kleczew district and, more generally, in the Warthegau that the model later applied in the mass murder of Polish and European Jewry evolved.

Given the background of the research initiative, it was decided that in addition to the historic research, which lies at the core of the study, the book would also contribute to the commemoration of the Jewish communities that had existed in this district by presenting, in specific appendices, relevant documentation; tables listing the names of Jewish families that had lived in Kleczew at various times; and events from Kleczew community life, including information that would reveal in detail the histories of several Jewish families from Kleczew. Examples are the survival story of a person who survived the extermination campaign through a last-minute escape from Kleczew to the East (Kroner); and a detailed history of at least one family (the Rachwalskis) as a representative of Jewish families from Kleczew and their fates. The Rachwalskis’ travails included the last-minute escape of Pessia Rachwalski and her children from Poland via Gdynia, by ship, on August 24, 1939, seven days before the German invasion of Poland, to join the head of the family, Majer, who had emigrated earlier from Kleczew to the United States.

It is impossible, of course, to pack all the information gathered about life in Kleczew into one book. As the manuscript was being edited, we had to make difficult decisions regarding what would give readers the broadest possible picture without inundating them with material irrelevant to the main topics of concern. We hope these decisions will be accepted with understanding.

I conclude by praising my father, Ze’ev Horev (Horzewski), who died as the book was being edited, and my mother Fruma―may she be graced with long life―who was born in Kleczew, daughter of the late Foigel (née Rachwalski from Kleczew) and Yitzhak Abba Traube (born in Kalisz) for their encouragement and warmth. Fruma is probably the last Jew alive who was born in Kleczew.

Last but not least, I offer loving gratitude to my dear ones―my wife, Mazal, and my children, Boaz, Ehud, and Einav―for their love, support, and encouragement.

Tuvia Horev

Karmei Yosef, Israel

Edition details

• Publisher: Academic Studies Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1618112848
• ISBN 13: 9781618112842
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 648
• Editor: Horev T.