In 1542, it was chartered under the Magdeburg Laws by King Sigismund I the Old and became a royal town. Jews began to settle in Chorzele at the end of the 18th century. The census of 1792 showed that apart from over 700 Christians, there were 19 Jews (2.5%) living in the town, all residing in a single house. They produced shoddy clothes and leather goods, were engaged in trade, and sold fish from the nearby lakes they leased.

The authorities of the Duchy of Warsaw made an attempt to create a Jewish quarter in Chorzele (1811) – it was planned to comprise Zduńska and Bagnowo Streets. All Jews were obliged to move to the quarter within three years. The only exception was made for the wealthiest Jewish individuals, especially those dealing with financial transactions and those best assimilated into the local society. These plans were thwarted by the defeat of the Duchy in the war with Russia. During the period of the Kingdom of Poland (Congress Poland), the number of Jews in Chorzele was rapidly increasing – in the second half of the 19th century, they already made up more than a half of the 2,000 inhabitants of the town. The local Jewish kehilla was formed at the turn of the 1830s. The community had its own cemetery, a large wooden synagogue, and a ritual bathhouse. In 1820, the kehilla made successful efforts to open a cheder in Chorzele. There were also two beth midrashim in the town, as well as a yeshiva founded by Rabbi Yehouda Leib Kowalski (in the 1890s). Chorzele also boasted a number of shietebelkh used by Hasidim from Góra Kalwaria, Aleksandrów, Mińsk Mazowiecki, and Sochaczew.

In the 19th century, Jews from Chorzele started to establish small industrial plants in the town. In the 1830s, Hersz Lerner’s tannery employed around a dozen workers. It supplied leather to the local shoemakers, who produced cheap shoes for the local population. Another Jewish-owned enterprise was Lewin Szczuciner’s boiler factory. At the beginning of the 20th century, the following establishments operated in Chorzele: Abram Przysuskier’s brewery, mills owned by the companies “Lichtensztejn i spółka” and “Sz. Salomon i spółka,” and D. Berlinek’s groats factory. In the 1930s, brickyards in nearby Przasnysz and Niskie Wielkie were run by Mendel and Pinchas Przysuskier, Jews from Chorzele.

Local Jewish merchants took advantage of the town’s location near the country border. They legally exported wooden goods, poultry, dairy products, dried mushrooms, vegetables, fruit, and bran, and imported second-hand clothing from Germany. Illegal trade was also present in Chorzele – coal, silverware, lace, shawls, and precious stones were smuggled from Germany, and other products, including saccharine, were illicitly sent out of the country. Some Jews of Chorzele leased fish ponds in East Prussia.

Before the outbreak of World War I, the Jewish Cooperative Fund was established in Chorzele. It mostly granted loans to small merchants and craftsmen. The illegal Workers’ Library and a drama club operated in the town at the beginning of the 20th century. A folk library founded and maintained by the supporters of Zionism survived until 1911. The growing popularity of the Jewish national project prompted first inhabitants of Chorzele to travel to Palestine. Charitable services were provided by the Chevra Kadisha burial society and by Linas Hatsedek, an organisation taking care of the sick and needy.

Soon after the outbreak of World War I, the Russians expelled the Jewish population from Chorzele, citing their alleged pro-German stance as the main reason for the displacement. Anyone caught returning to the town was deported to the inner regions of Russia. Chorzele was seized by the Bolsheviks in 1920. Some Jewish activists with radical revolutionary views became active in the structures of the new authorities. Several of them were sentenced to death once the town was seized by the Polish Army.

The early twentieth century saw a decline in the Jewish community’s share in the local population, from 57% in 1905, to 38% in the census of 1921, and to 31% in the 1930s. In the period of the Second Republic of Poland, the community was represented by one councillor sitting on the municipal authorities. There was a Jewish primary school in the town. In the interwar period, the strongest Jewish political forces in Chorzele were the Orthodox Agudath and the Zionists. The local cell of the Zionist He-Halutz youth organisation organised migrations to Palestine (150 people migrated in total).

After the outbreak of World War II, almost all Jews left Chorzele, but some of them soon returned to the town. After the incorporation of northern Mazovia into the Reich, the town became a gathering site of Jews from surrounding localities. The Germans demolished the synagogue, beth midrash, and ritual bath, and established an open ghetto in the existing Jewish quarter. Its prisoners were gradually deported to other ghettos. A group of 450 Jews was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto, while others were transported to Maków Mazowiecki, Legionowo, Węgrów. The final liquidation of the ghetto was carried out in December 1941. The inhabitants of the Jewish quarter were displaced to the ghetto in Maków Mazowiecki. At the end of November of the following year, they were sent through the transit camp in Mława to the Nazi German death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz.

The Jewish cemetery in Chorzele was founded in the 19th century. It occupies an elongated trapezoid-shaped plot with an area of ca. 0.8629 hectares, located between the streets Ogrodowa and Nadrzeczna, southwest of the town centre. The last recorded burial at the site took place in 1939. During World War II, the Germans vandalised the cemetery and used the tombstones to build pavements. The area was turned into a training ground (a trace of which is a trench dug by the Germans, still visible today) and a cemetery for German soldiers, which was established on the side of Ogrodowa Street.

In 1989, the Social Committee for the Restoration of the Jewish Cemetery was established in Chorzele. The erstwhile parish priest called on the parishioners to return the Jewish tombstones or provide information about their location. The necropolis was thoroughly tidied up. The works were concluded in 1991, crowned with the unveiling of a monument made of the few recovered fragments of matzevot. Located in the centre of the cemetery, the monument bears inscriptions in Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish. It was founded by the Union of Chorzele Jews in Israel. In 2000, at the request of the Chorzele Landsmanshaft, the Nissenbaum Family Foundation commenced further works at the former cemetery. The area was surrounded with a fence. Six years later, a memorial plaque commemorating the Fiszerung family was officially unveiled at the cemetery.

Description copyright owner: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews