It received a development impulse with the foundation charter granted by King Stanisław August Poniatowski in 1767, obtained thanks to the efforts of Stanisław Ankwicz– the erstwhile proprietor of Andrychów. First Jews probably appeared in Andrychów in the second half of the 18th century; they were merchants coming to town from other regions of the country. In the 19th century, they acted as intermediaries for Andrychów’s trade, transporting local goods to Constantinople, Smyrna, Alexandria, Venice, Barcelona, Lübeck, Hamburg, and Moscow.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the number of Jews in Andrychów started to increase rapidly. In 1799, only 37 Jews (1.5% of the total population) lived in the town, in 1816 – already as many as 90 (3%). In the second half of that century, Andrychów had the highest percentage of Jewish population in its history. At that time, the community consisted of over 600 people (ca. 17%). The exact date of establishing a separate Jewish community in Andrychów is not known. As the Jewish population grew richer, its role in the town increased. Initially, local Jews mostly made a living from trade and alcohol sale, but gradually more and more of them started to deal with craftsmanship and manufacture. A Jewish reading room was established in Andrychów in 1852, and in 1884, a German-style brick synagogue with 600 seats was built in place of an older wooden temple. At the same time, a Jewish cemetery was established.

Products manufactured in factories operating in Andrychów became popular throughout Europe. In the third quarter of the 19th century, local Jews imported cotton yarn to the town and manufactured ready-made canvas. Many others became owners of dye-works. Representatives of the Jewish community sat on the Municipal Council. According to data from 1890, as many as over 650 Jews living in Andrychów were industrialists, merchants, and craftsmen. At the end of the 19th century, however, the number of Jews living in Andrychów started to slowly decrease, as merchants not connected to the weaving industry were finding it difficult to make a living in the town. A great breakthrough in the history of Andrychów was the opening of a mechanical weaving mill by two Czech Jews, the Czeczowiczek brothers, in 1908. Another important Jewish entrepreneur was Teodor Feliks, the owner of a hydraulic mangle combined with a dye-works.

In reborn Poland, the Jewish community in Andrychów shrank considerably – in 1921, it comprised only slightly over 400 members. The reason for such a substantial decrease in the number of Jews was the crisis that struck the town after the end of World War I. As a result of opening markets in Galicia for Łódź factories, some Jews were forced to close their plants and move to Bielsko and other towns, especially to Wadowice. Eight Jews won seats on the Municipal Council in the elections in 1927 (out of 40 seats). The Jewish candidates were supported by a part of the Polish population. On the eve of the outbreak of World War II, Andrychów was inhabited by less than 400 Jews, who constituted only 6% of the total population of the town.

In the beginning of the 20th century, Zionist organisations gained a strong position in Andrychów. In the interwar period, the town boasted divisions of the youth organisations Ha-Shomer Ha-Tzair and Akiva as well as the Women's International Zionist Organisation (WIZO). The Jewish Maccabi sports association also had a local branch.

In the first days of September 1939, the town was invaded by the German army and then in corporated into the Third Reich. Some of the Andrychów Jews fled to the eastern territories of Poland and found themselves under Soviet occupation. The German occupier immediately started to persecute the Jewish population. This took the form of robberies of Jewish shops and premises, evictions, confiscation of businesses and workshops, and sending Jews to forced labour. In November, the Germans set fire to the synagogue. In the census of the Jewish population carried out in December 370 Jews were recorded in Andrychów, a third of them refugees from Cieszyn Silesia. At the end of 1939, the Germans established a Judenrat (Jewish Council) whose first chairman was Aharon Weinsaft.

In the autumn of 1941, the German authorities decided to create an open ghetto for 300 Jews. It was located in the poorest part of the city, in the triangle of Szewska, Brzegi, and Koświckiego streets. Transports of Jews from neighbouring towns were directed to the newly established district. From the very beginning, the ghetto was designed as a forced labour camp for Jews, and at the same time it served as a showcase of the “humane” treatment of Jews in the Third Reich during the visits of Red Cross representatives. It was clean and tidy, and no epidemics broke out. The Germans also turned a blind eye to the contacts of the ghetto inhabitants with the outside world. In July 1942, the Germans began to liquidate the Andrychów ghetto, sending several hundred people to other ghettos and to the Nazi German extermination camp of Auschwitz. The second deportation of the Jewish population took place in September 1942, when over 200 people were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In May of the following year, the Andrychów ghetto was transformed into a forced labour camp for Jews, eventually liquidated after a few months. It is estimated that about 25 Andrychów Jews survived the Holocaust, most of them in labour camps.

The Jewish cemetery in Andrychów was established in the first half of the 19th century on the opposite bank of the Wieprzówka River, in the current Żwirki i Wigury Street. It was the burial place of ca. 1,000 Jews from Andrychów and its environs and from Kęty. The cemetery was accessed through a gateway housing the pre-burial house (now defunct).

The necropolis survived World War II almost intact and was entered in the register of monuments in 1989. In the 1990s, the cemetery was cleaned up. A full wall was erected around the premises, adorned with a commemorative plaque which has since been taken down: “The construction of the wall has been funded from donations of Jews from all around the world, under the supervision of Mrs Stela Dorn-Weinsaft and Isaak Korn.” In 1991, Jessica Skippon took inventory of the 608 preserved matzevot (the list is available at https://sztetl.org.pl). Since 2003, the Jewish Religious Community in Bielsko-Biała has been taking care of the necropolis.

Over 600 gravestones dating from the 19th and 20th centuries survived in an area of 0.6 hectares. Some of the tombstones are partially damaged. Most matzevot have the form of rectangular slabs with semi-circular coping or obelisks. Made of sandstone, marble, basalt, or granite, they were produced by local carvers or by the Oświęcim-based “Wulkan” company. The tombstones mostly bear inscriptions in German or Polish, less frequently in Hebrew. The fence marks the original boundaries of the cemetery, but fragments of the historic brick wall have been preserved only on the eastern and the northern side. From the west and the south, the necropolis is surrounded with a modern wire mesh fence with concrete elements. Many old trees have been preserved in the cemetery area – mostly ashes, oaks, and buckeyes.

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