Until the second half of the 18th century, there were no Jewish residents in the town owned by the Cistercian monks from Sulejów. The earliest pieces of information confirming the presence of Jews in Mogielnica date back to 1777. The local Jewish community was most likely formed after the Third Partition of Poland, when the area came under Prussian rule. In 1808, there were over 200 Jews in Mogielnica (one third of the total population). Most of the Jewish inhabitants of the town were traditionally involved in trade and crafts, especially in tailoring, shoemaking, and tanning.

By the mid-19th century, Jews already constituted the majority of the local population, with Mogielnica becoming an important centre of Hasidism. In 1828, a Hasidic court and a yeshiva were established in the town by Chaim Meir Yechiel Shapira (grandson of the famous Maggid of Kozhnitz, disciple of Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Apt and the Seer of Lublin, married to a granddaughter of Elimelech of Lizhensk). This attracted hundreds of Hasidic pilgrims to the town, which consequently contributed to its economic development. In view of the large influx of Hasidic Jews to Mogielnica, the narrow-gauge railway line connecting Warsaw and Piaseczno was extended during World War I (1917) and came to reach Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą via Grójec and Mogielnica. After Chaim’s death in 1849, his son Yaakov Isaac Shapira set up new centres of the Kozhnitz-Mogelnitz dynasty in Błędów, Grodzisk, and Piaseczno. In 1856, a wooden synagogue was erected at Dół Street in Mogielnica. It was one of the most beautiful Jewish temples in the region. It survived until World War II, when it was set on fire by the Germans.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the locality (deprived of town rights by the Russians) had ca. 1,900 Jewish inhabitants (61% of the population). At the turn of the 20th century, the Jewish community in Mogielnica formed part of the distinct “bipartite” economic system of the small town. The Jews dealt mainly with trade and most sectors of artisan production and owned houses in the centre of the town, mainly in the Market Square. The Christians, meanwhile, were involved in agricultural production, supplying vegetables and fruit for the Warsaw market, and would set up their farms on the outskirts of Mogielnica.

In reborn Poland, the share of Jews in the town’s population decreased, although the overall number of residents had increased – in the first census in 1921, over 2,700 Jewish people were recorded in Mogielnica (51%). The situation of the community in the interwar period became quite difficult due to the economic crisis and growing anti-Semitism. Little information has survived about the political activity of the Jews of Mogielnica. We only know that at first the most popular party was the leftist Bund, active since the beginning of the 20th century, but it lost its dominance to the Orthodox Agudath during the period of the Second Republic of Poland. Zionists active in the structures of Mizrachi also had some influence in the town, which is evidenced by the operation of the Yavneh school network in Mogielnica (the first Zionist groups had been founded in the town at the end of the 19th century). There were also schools run by Tarbut and Beit Yaakov. On the eve of the war, the Jewish community of Mogielnica had about 3,000 members.

Mogielnica was seized by the Wehrmacht in September 1939. The Germans burnt down the wooden synagogue on the very first day of the occupation and immediately introduced repressions against the Jewish population. In October, they ordered the formation of a Judenrat (Jewish Council). It was responsible for providing forced labourers to the Germans and taking care of the 1,500 Jewish refugees who had arrived in the town. The Mogielnica Ghetto, established in 1940, was liquidated in February 1942. Its prisoners were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto and shared the fate of its residents, with the majority murdered in the gas chambers of Treblinka.

The Jewish cemetery in Mogielnica (today’s Armii Krajowej Street) is located about a kilometre north of the Market Square, in the woods on the left side of Grójecka Street. The necropolis was established at the turn of the 19th century on top of a small hill. It is the resting place of local tzaddikim and rabbis, as well as hundreds of Jews living in Mogielnica and nearby towns. In 1848, the cemetery was fenced. It was enlarged twelve years later, with its area almost doubling. The graves were probably arranged in rows and the matzevot were facing south-east.

During World War II, the necropolis was destroyed by the Germans. Many tombstones were torn out and used as building material. The cemetery continued to fall into decline in the post-war period. Its area was overgrown with a several dozen years old forest. A handful of matzevot broken at the base survived among the trees. Two of them bore partially legible epitaphs in Hebrew, one including the date 1881. In the first decade of the 21st century, the only surviving relics at the site were around a dozen fragments of tombstones. Two ohelim were erected above the presumed resting places of local tzaddikim in the early 21st century. The larger one was erected in memory of Tzaddik Zelig Shapira and his wife Perla, daughter of the Maggid of Kozhnitz, and Tzaddik Chaim Meir Icie of Mogelnitz with his wife Gitel, daughter of Eliezer of Lizhensk. The smaller ohel marks the burial place of Tzaddik Yaakov of Mogelnitz, son of Elimelech of Lizhensk. In the spring of 2010, the ohelim were cleaned up and plastered thanks to the efforts of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage. Ca. 60 tombstones (used by the Germans during the war to pave a courtyard in Dziarnowska Street) were put into safe storage and will be used during the restoration of the necropolis.

Two years later, members of the Foundation were carrying out works at the cemetery aimed at reconstructing its pre-war layout. They discovered the grave of Lea Perl, mother of Tzaddik Chaim Meir Yechiel Shapira. The inscription found on the preserved fragment of her matzeva made it possible to determine the exact burial place of her son, known as the Great Rebbe. In May 2015, about 200 Jews from all over the world came to Mogielnica for the ceremonial unveiling of a new ohel dedicated to Tzaddik Shapira and his mother. Two sandstone matzevot from the late 1930s were also discovered during cleaning works at the cemetery. Both are adorned with fully preserved polychromes and are thus of great value.

On 8 April 1992, the cemetery was entered into the register of monuments by the decision of the State Service for the Protection of Historical Monuments in Radom, registered under the number 526/A/92.

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