The town developed due to its favorable location on the trade route leading to Hungary. Until the end of the 17th century, the town grew rich by trading in wine, cattle, salt, linen and cloth. In 1676, 23 Jewish families lived here.

In 1742, there was a Jewish community, as well as a cemetery and a wooden synagogue, which burned down along with part of the buildings in the town fire in 1758. A brick synagogue was built in its place. In 1772, Dukla became part of the Austrian partition and for some time it was the seat of a district encompassing 471 towns, including: Krosno and Jasło. In 1795, there were 574 Jews in the town.

Industry developed in Dukla at the end of the 19th century. There were several mills, a distillery, three kerosene rafineries, and factories producing stearin, matches, soda water, and cloth. In 1870, the Jewish community numbered 2,338 people and managed three synagogues and a cemetery.

In 1884, the town suffered a major fire, in which 104 Jewish houses and the synagogue burned down. On the initiative of Rabbi Tzvi Lajtner, a new brick synagogue was built in its place. At that time, there were three religious schools, a Savings and Credit Society, an Escount and Trade Society, distilleries, as well as a four-grade Jewish primary school for boys with vocational training. At the end of the 19th century, the Hasidic movement had numerous supporters in the town. The rabbi of Dukla was then gaon Szmul Engel, a student of tzadik Chaim Halberstam from Nowy Sącz.

The outbreak of World War I interrupted the development of industry and the economic revival that took place at the end of the 19th century. In the years 1914–1915, the city was occupied by Russian troops, who caused significant damage and robbed local Jews.

In 1921, Dukla was inhabited by 1,509 Jews, which is much less than at the beginning of the 20th century. In the interwar period, the 'Yad Charuzim' Association of Jewish Handicraftsmen, the Credit Union, the Merchants' Association and a branch of the Association of Jewish Cooperative Societies operated in the city. The last rabbi in the town was Pinchas Hirszprung, who after World War II served as the chief rabbi of Montreal in Canada for many years.

Following the outbreak of World War II, Dukla was occupied by the Germans. The occupation authorities started persecuting the Jewish community. On Yom Kippur, German soldiers dragged praying Jews from the synagogue and beat them. During the next holiday, Sukkot, the Germans extorted a ransom and then exiled the Jews to the Soviet occupation zone beyond the San. The occupier established a Judenrat for those who remained in Dukla. In 1942, there were approx. 1,600 Jews, including those displaced from Polish lands incorporated into the Third Reich.

The Jewish community in Dukla was liquidated in 1942. The German occupation authorities ordered Jews living in nearby villages to move to the town. Then the soldiers gathered the entire Jewish population and divided them into three groups. The first group included old people, women and children who were transported to the German Nazi extermination camp in Bełżec. The second, smaller group included Jewish intelligentsia, whom the Germans shot in the forest on the slope of Błudna Góra. The occupiers sent the remaining healthy and strong men to work in the quarries in Lipowica and to repair the road to Barwinek. Later, this third group was deported to the ghetto in Rzeszów. At the same time, the Germans captured and murdered hiding Jews, and devastated cemeteries and synagogues. The Holocaust was probably survived by approx. 150 Dukla Jews.

The Description

The Jewish necropolis complex in Dukla consists of two adjacent cemeteries, old and new, located at Trakt Węgierski street, leading from the town to Tylawa. Before the outbreak of World War II, they were functionally unified.

The new Jewish cemetery in Dukla was established approx. 1870, on plot no. 314, approx. 100 m from Trakt Węgierski street, north-west from the older necropolis. A historic fence in the form of a stone wall and a metal gate, as well as approx. 200 tombstones. There is also a collective grave of 40 Jews shot by the German authorities in occupied Poland during World War II.

In 2004–2005 and in 2013, the entire area of both Jewish cemeteries was tidied up. A group of members of the Polish Union of Jewish Students participated in the works.

Author of the note: Magda Lucima

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