At that time, the local Jews were subordinated to the kahal in Łęczyca and were probably mainly engaged in the wool and cloth trade. At that time, there were about 300  workshops in the city, and the town was the most important center of cloth production in Poland. In the second half of the 18th century, the Brzeziny kahal also included Jews living in the surrounding villages, including: Wiączyń, Mileszki, Bedoń, Witkowice, Przanowice, Koluszki, Kędziorki, and Stawki.

In 1793, the became a part in the Prussian partition, in 1807 it was in the territory of the Duchy of Warsaw, and from 1815 it found itself within the borders of the Kingdom of Poland. After the January Uprising in 1863, there was a large influx of Jewish people. The centre of the social and cultural life of the cluster became Źródlana street (current Berka Joselewicza street). Jews were mainly engaged in cattle trading, selling clothes at fairs, running shops, and home-made tailoring. Although the outbreak of World War I interrupted the rapid development of the local tailor workshops after it has been cut off from the Russian market, during the Second Polish Republic Brzeziny was still known as the 'capital of tailoring.'

During the Second World War, Brzeziny was incorporated into the General Government under German occupation. One of the first repressions was the banning of Jewish doctors from practicing and the ban on teaching Jewish children in schools. The occupying German authorities confiscated approx. 100 suits, located in wholesale stores and warehouses owned by Jewish merchants. The Germans also burned down the local synagogue, blaming the local rabbi, Zelman Borensztajn; following this event, they imposed a contribution. They also banned Jews from trading in all kinds of fabrics, hides and leather products.

In 1939, the occupier forced Jews to wear a yellow armband with the word 'Jude' on their right arm and to mark Jewish shops, businesses and apartments with the Star of David. In 1940, the German occupation authorities established a ghetto in which, alongside local Jews, people deported from Lipiny, Łódź and Stryków were imprisoned. The ghetto area was enclosed by a wooden fence. The living conditions inside were very difficult, diseases spread, and prisoners were forced to perform forced labor. The Germans carried out many executions.

The ghetto in Brzeziny was liquidated in 1942. The German occupation authorities took children up to 10 years old from their families and then killed them in the gas chambers of the German Nazi extermination camp in Chełmno upon Ner. The occupiers then started to displace the remaining prisoners in the ghetto. Some of them were murdered in the same place as the children, and the rest were mainly sent to Łódź. In Brzeziny, the Germans left approx. 300 Jewish workers who, until the autumn of 1942, searched houses in the ghetto and sorted out the property left behind.

Brzeziny was occupied by Red Army troops in 1945. A small group of Jews survived the Holocaust and later emigrated to Palestine, the United States or France. In these countries they created compatriot organisations. At the end of 1954, there was only one person of Jewish origin living in the town.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Brzeziny was established in the area north of the town, outside the built-up area, and at the current Reymonta street. Formerly it was a road towards Wymysłów.

The necropolis was devastated by Germans during World War II. The tombstones were used to build roads, fences, a bridge over the Mrożyca River and to line the pond in the town park. After the war, the cemetery area was used as a gravel pit, and in later years as an illegal garbage dump.

It was not until the 1990s, when on the initiative of the Jews of Brzeziny under the leadership of Eliezer Zyskind, the cemetery was tidied up and fenced. A monument in the shape of a matzeva was erected, adorned with a Star of David and an inscription in three languages: 'In eternal memory of the Jews from Brzeziny buried in this cemetery.' Fragments of tombstones were embedded in the large base of the monument. In 2013, in consultation with the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, the Brzeziny Town Hall recovered the remains of matzevas from the pond and recovered tombstones used to build a bridge over the Mrożyca River. Most of them were secured in the Regional Museum at Marszałka Józefa Piłsudskiego 49. Today, the area of the cemetery in Brzeziny is permanently transformed as a result of the activities of the gravel pit, and is also overgrown with bushes and trees. On the site one can find approx. 20 fragments of tombstones.

Author of the note: Magda Lucima

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