The history of the Jews from Czarny Dunajec

The beginnings and the development of the Jewish community of Czarny Dunajec

The first mentions of Jews in Czarny Dunajec appear in documents dated 1640; however permanent Jewish settlement dates back to the end of the 18th century or the first half of the 19th century. The church data from 1834 show the proportions of the Catholic and Jewish population in the deanery of Nowy Targ, which included, among others, the parish in Czarny Dunajec. For over 60,000 Catholics accounted for 331 Jews in the entire deanery. 12 years later the proportions changed: for 52,000 Catholics accounted for 470 Jews. 

The December constitution of the Austro - Hungarian monarchy established in 1867 granted Jews the same rights as other inhabitants of the Austrian partition, which resulted in a rapid increase of the Jewish population also in western Galicia. At the end of the 19th century, almost 300 Jews lived in the Czarny Dunajec area and the surrounding towns that were a part of the parish. According to a census conducted by the Austro - Hungarian authorities in 1910, the Czarny Dunajec community was inhabited by 436 Jews out of 14,639 people. The 1913 church data inform about 335 Jews living in the Czarny Dunajec parish. According to the 1921 census, 341 Jews lived in Czarny Dunajec, in 1927 - 400, and in 1939 - 405.  Before the war, the Jewish community constituted a dozen or so percent at most of the total population of Czarny Dunajec, byt its influence on the economic and social life of the city was greater.

The Czarny Dunajec Jews owned shops, bakeries, inns, mills, and small production plants. They traded alcohol, leather, wood, fabrics, they worked as stallholders, butchers, carters, shoemakers, tailors, hairdressers, glaziers but also lawyers, doctors and teachers. The first Czarny Dunajec Jew surnames that appear in the documents are the names of the councilors and persons appearing in partially preserved birth, marriage and death records from the second half of the 19th century.

Jewish councilors of Czarny Dunajec

The first Jewish councilor was Samuel Glücksman, who held this position from 1867 to 1870 and 1873 to 1891, for a total of 21 years. The second Jewish name that appears on the list of councilors is Mojżesz Horowitz (he held this position from 1870 to 1879), and the third one was Józef Korngut (he sat on the council from 1873 to 1886). Another councilor was Abraham Blumenkranz (1879 - 1886), who appears in the oldest surviving entries in birth registration book three times as the father of Mojżesz (born 1871), Ryfka (born 1874) and Eisig (born 1876). Their mother was Freidel (Fani) Blumenkranz. There are more names of Jewish inhabitants of Czarny Dunajec as well as surrounding towns in the entries in the birth, marriage and death registration books.

Social and economic life before the war

What did the life of the Jewish community before the outbreak of the war look like? Jews used to pray in the beautiful brick synagogue near the market square, which has endured to this day. It was probably built at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Apart from it, there were several prayer houses, a mikhev and a Jewish cemetery. The youngest children attended a nursery, and boys from the age of 3 also attended cheders. There was also a Talmud - Tora school and the Chewra Kadisha funeral fraternity. From 1935 the Charitable Association of Jewish Women operated in Czarny Dunajec. The everyday life of the community focused on the market square and its surroundings: today’s Kmietowicza, Sienkiewicza, Kamieniec Górny and Dolny, Tetmajera and Kantora streets. Jews lived, worked and prayed there. The list of commune councilors from 1919 includes the names of several significant Jews from Czarny Dunajec. Izaak Lipschütz was a rabbi, Józef Lehrer had a large shop in the market square and a warehouse, Szymon Pacanower was a lawyer, Henryk Holländer ran two hardware stores in the market square, Efraim Korngut owned a department store, Henryk Pacanower had a water mill. Apart from them, bakeries in Czarny Dunajec were run by Georg Jonas, Salomon Gutfreund, Wiktor Horowitz and I.Löwenbraun, fabric shops were run by Felicja Balitzer, Hermann Goldfinger, Józef Korngut and Jerzy Lamensdorf, tin dishes were sold by Natan Neugewürz and Samuel Baumann; Adolf Stiller and R. Neugewürz were tailors, wood was traded by Aron Zachariasz Jeret, Bernard Steiner, Józef Korngut, and leather by Aron Lipschütz. A. Fuchs was a hairdresser, J. Müller a glazier, Izrael Segal a doctor, Lamensdorf a lawyer, Chaim Trepper, Mojżesz Lemler and Henryk Langer were shoemakers, Chaim Bachner, J. Fischer, M. Flank, Izaak Langer, Pinkus Weiss, Izaak Goldmann were butchers, Chaim Balitzer sold agricultural machinery, Izaak Aron Kalfus owned a mead factory, D. Kalfus owned a vinegar factory, Korngut and Zysel Pacanower sold beer and wine, Gustaw Pacanower sold vodka and liqueurs, Chaim Kleinzahler ran an inn and a bowling alley, Jakub Langer, A. Strum, Gustaw Pacanower owned taverns, A. Horowitz winery, and Mendel Kleinzahler ran a milk purchase. 

Monday was an important trading day in Czarny Dunajec, when fairs were held, first at the Market Square, the at the marketplace on the road to Ciche. 

Religious life of Jews from Czarny Dunajec

According to the accounts of the descendants, the synagogue in Czarny Dunajec could accommodate about 300 people. Next to it there was a a wooden prayer house, which was burned down by the Germans. There was also a mikveh. 

The most important day of the week was Saturday, or rather the period from Friday evening to Saturday evening. According to the inhabitants’ accounts, on Friday afternoon the Market Square was empty, Jewish shops and workshops closed, and Shabbat candles were lit in the houses after sunset. On Saturday, Jews prayed in the synagogue, for several years Izaak Lipschütz was the rabbi of Czarny Dunajec (probably until the war).

In the second half of the 19th century a Jewish cemetery was established on the outskirts of Czarny Dunajec, by the road to Pieniążkowice. Probably at the main entrance there was a pre-burial house with a well from which water needed for the rites was drawn. The building has not survived to this day, only the foundation remains. It is estimated that about 300 people were buried in the cemetery. To this day, only one matzeva has survived in the cemetery, which stands in its original place, several others have been recovered and placed in the lapidarium in the place of the former pre-burial house.

Assimilation

 It is difficult to assess to what extent the Jewish community of Czarny Dunajec was assimilated, but the Jews spoke Polish on a daily basis, they also knew the highlander dialect because they went to school together with their highlander peers. There was no separate Jewish elementary school in Czarny Dunajec, only the cheders mentioned before, which the boys attended in the afternoons.

The Polish language had to be the everyday language of the Jews from Czarny Dunajec. One of the most valuable proofs of this is the so-called „Mejloch’s letter”, a 16-page long letter written in Polish by an 18-year-old Jewish boy, Mejloch Kleinzahler, in August 1939. Never sent to the addressee (his cousin), the letter was found in the house where the Kleinzahler family once lived at today’s Targowa Street (the house was demolished in 2022).

Jews, as citizens of the Second Polish Republic, were also legally required to serve in the Polish army. We know the story of one of the Jewish soldiers of the Polish Army told by the descendants of his family. In the photos provided to us, several-year-old Szlomo Horowitz first poses in a highlander outfit with his siblings, and in 1939 in the Polish army uniform. According to the family’s accounts, Szlomo died for his homeland in the first days of the September campaign. 

World War II and the Holocaust (1939-1945)

After the outbreak of the war, Czarny Dunajec, due to its border location, found itself in an area that the Germans wanted to „cleanse” of Jews. Initially, the Jews from Czarny Dunajec left for Nowy Targ and Kraków, but after some time the occupation authorities allowed them to return home. Ultimately, Czarny Dunajec was not included in the exclusion zone around Zakopane.

At the beginning of the occupation, the Germans took over one of the tenement houses in the Market Square for the Gestapo. It was a Gestapo post, which headquarters was in Zakopane. Its chief during the extermination of the Czarny Dunajec Jews was „the executioner of Podhale” Robert Weissmann. 

In 1942, at least several dozen Jews lived in Czarny Dunajec. The sawmill was taken over by the occupation authorities and it employed Jewish forced laborers, most of whom commuted to work by train from Nowy Targ. After the deportation and murder of the Jews in Podhale in August 1942, the workers were barracked in a barrack on the site of the sawmill, transforming it into the „Hobag” labor camp, which was closed down only in May 1943. Jewish forced laborers also worked in the sand and gravel excavation run by the “Flußkies” company on the Czarny Dunajec River. The aforementioned Józef Lehrer, the shop owner in the Market Square, was shot dead by Gestapo officers on 20th May 1942, together with a farmer from Wróblówka, Karol Chraca, from whom he allegedly illegally bought meat. This execution was witnessed by Józef’s daughter, Regina Lehrer, who worked as a cleaner at the Gestapo headquarters. She was also shot on the spot. All three were buried in the Jewish cemetery, Karol Chraca’s body was exhumed in 1945 and buried in the Catholic cemetery. Operation Reinhardt, a Nazi operation to exterminate Jews in extermination camps as part of the so-called Final Solution to the Jewish Question, began in Podhale in the summer of 1942. In Czarny Dunajec, ,mass executions took place in July and August. According to the testimonies of relatives preserved in the Yad Vashem archives, on 4th July 1942, Gestapo chief Franz Maywald shot, among others, Gustav and maria Pacanower and Józef Süsner, about 10 people in total died that day. On 24th August, more than a dozen people were shot dead. According to eyewitness accounts and preserved documents Natan and Gitel Neugewürz and Natan’s daughter Róża Trepper with her two-year-old son, the baker Georg Jonaswith his wife Sala, Henryk and Anna Balitzer, Herman and Salomea Kolber, Ella Lehrer, Mina Kraus, among others, died at that time.

The last day of the Jewish community from Czarny Dunajec was 28th August. The last group of Jews who were not shot was transported to Nowy Targ, from where, two days later, they went from the railway station in terrible conditions to the death camp in Bełżec, where they died. 

Apart from the victims of Operation Reinhardt in July and August 1942, the Jewish workers from the „Hobag” labour camp are also buried at the Jewish cemetery in Czarny Dunajec. They died in two executions in November and December 1943. From over 20 names of those killed, eight have been identified so far: Majer Bittersfeld, Abraham Knobler, Natan Knobler, Leopold Löwenberg, Józef Schön, Natan Statter, Fryderyk Silbiger and Mojżesz Szaulewicz.

After the Holocaust 

It seemed that the nightmare of war and violence would end in 1945 with the capitulation of the Third Reich. For some Jews who survived the Holocaust and were saved, however, this was not the end of the persecution. The first documented post-war murder of Jews in Podhale took place on 11th May 1945 in Maniowy. Members of Józef Kuraś „Ogień” unit shot four Jews who had just returned from concentration camps, including Baruch Feit, Leon Kraus and Chaim Blonder from Czarny Dunajec

Of the several hundred Jews who lived in Czarny Dunajec before World War II, none remained after the war. Most died in the extermination camp in Bełżec or other camps and in executions in the town; some survived (mainly in the USSR due to deportation to Siberia) and went abroad, and the few who returned after the war also emigrated. The descendants of Czarny Dunajec Jews currently live in, among others, Israel, USA, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands and Belgium. The only thing left after the former Jewish inhabitants is the Jewish cemetery, the synagogue and one house, where the trace of the mezuzah is still visible.

Translation: Gabriela Bałek