Les Juifs de Kielce

Kielce, in central Poland, was home to an Ashkenazi Jewish community that developed mainly in the nineteenth century, its members being merchants, craftsmen, and small industrialists. The city had synagogues, schools, and communal institutions, and knew a diverse Jewish political life before the Second World War. Under Nazi occupation, almost the entire community was confined to a ghetto, then deported and exterminated, notably at Treblinka. Kielce is tragically renowned for the pogrom of July 1946, perpetrated against survivors who had returned to the city, which claimed several dozen victims and hastened the departure of many Jews from Poland.

Sources & resources

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan