Some of its pioneers were Jakub (Jankiel) Steinman – owner of a cotton products factory and Antoni Ostrowski’s plenipotentiary and co-worker, and Jakub Kempner, leaseholder of a blast furnace and forges in Tomaszów.

An official Jewish community was founded in the town in 1831. Tomaszów was initially a private town devoid of a separate district for Jews. However, after ownership of the centre was taken by the State Treasury, the Jewish population was only allowed to reside in specific streets (1844–1866). They mostly lived in the area of the erstwhile streets Bożnicza, Kramarska, Handlowa, Rzemieślnicza, Mojżesza, Kupiecka, Jerozolimska, Wschodnia, and Polna. At the turn of the 20th century, the Jewish kehilla in Tomaszów owned a cemetery, synagogue, house of prayer, mikveh, several chadarim, small houses of prayer (shtiebelekh), a ritual slaughterhouse, and a hospital. In 1911, Jews made up the majority of Tomaszów’s textile entrepreneurs. Some of the most important factories were those owned by the Steinman family, Sylber, Landsberg, Halpern, Bornsztajn, and the Bernsteins.

In 1829, there were already 800 Jews living in Tomaszów Mazowiecki. On the eve of World War I, the community had as many as 7,500 members. The share of Jews in the total number of inhabitants was steadily increasing – from 29% (1829) to 49% (1907). In the interwar period, however, the community began to form an ever smaller part of the local population, with its share falling to 26% in 1939.

The interwar years were a flourishing period for the political life of the Jewish community in Tomaszów. The movements which enjoyed greatest popularity among the local Jews were leftist organisations (the Communist Party of Poland, the Bund) and Zionist groups (Zionist Organisation, Poale Zion). In the 1930s, members of the Orthodox Agudath dominated the community board. Almost all major political groups active in the town ran associated educational institutions. There was a Talmud-Torah school in the town (operating under the auspices of the Agudath), a Polish-Hebrew high school, libraries, and theatre troupes.

When World War II broke out, Tomaszów was inhabited by around 12,000 Jews. In October 1939, the Germans burnt down three local synagogues and ordered the Jews to establish a Judenrat (Jewish Council), which came to be headed by Baruch Szoeps (he was replaced by Lejbusz Warsager in 1941, having been murdered by the Gestapo). Józef Goldberg was the commander of the Jewish police.

In December 1940, the Germans established a ghetto in Tomaszów Mazowiecki. It had a total area of ca. 65 hectares (covering three districts in different parts of the city). Its boundaries were marked by the streets Wschodnia, Zgorzelecka, Legionów, Smugowa, Jerozolimska, Żwirki i Wigury, and Polna. The streets included in the ghetto area were Piekarska, Wieczność, Rolna, Ciepła, Handlowa, part of Kramarska, Krzyżowa, Jerozolimska, Bożnicza. Two labour camps operated in Tomaszów. They were located outside the perimeter of the ghetto, in Szeroka Street (Polish: ul. Szeroka) and between Władysława Street and Projektowa Street. In November 1941, the ghetto area was reduced to the streets Wschodnia, Krzyżowa, Zgorzelicka, Legionów up to Smugowa, and along Graniczna and Polna. The district was then closed off – the entrances were barred and marked with warning signs.

Jews from the environs of Tomaszów were displaced to the local ghetto soon after its establishment. By March 1941, its population came to comprise over 15,000 people. At that point, the Germans started to deport groups of Jews to the forced labour camps in Bliżyn and Pionki. The liquidation of the ghetto began in April 1942. Jewish political activists were apprehended and killed, followed by bakers and butchers, and then by the Jewish intelligentsia (doctors, teachers, lawyers). The members of the Judenrat were executed in May. The ghetto in Tomaszów Mazowiecki was finally dissolved at the turn of November 1942. Many people were killed on the spot and ca. 14,000 were taken to the Treblinka extermination camp. The district officially ceased to exist in December of the same year. Only a group of 920 Jews remained in Tomaszów, imprisoned in a forced labour camp which was liquidated in September 1943 (the last Jews living in the town were transported by the Germans to Starachowice). Ca. 500 members of the pre-war Jewish community of Tomaszów survived the Holocaust, but only a handful of them resided in the town right after the war.

The Description

The Jewish cemetery in Tomaszów Mazowiecki was established in 1831. It was located on a plot of land in Smutna Street donated to the community by Count Antoni Ostrowski. Beforehand, the local Jews had buried their dead in Inowłódz, situated around a dozen kilometres away. Dawid Halpern, a merchant and the head of the local Jewish community, largely contributed to the foundation of the Tomaszów necropolis. Rabbi Lejke Zilber founded the Chevra Kadisha burial society in the town. During the Holocaust, the cemetery became a site of numerous German executions of Jews, with the victims buried in mass graves. Some of the tombstones were removed from the site and used in construction works in the town; only a part of the plundered slabs returned to the cemetery after the war (in 1999, tombstones used for paving one of the courtyards in Tomaszów were brought back to the premises). In 1989, the necropolis was entered into the register of monuments. The neglected cemetery grounds were partially cleaned up in the years 1995–1999 on the initiative of Beniamin Yaari-Wald, president of the Union of Tomaszów Jews in Israel. An inventory of the surviving tombstones was also taken at the time.

The cemetery currently occupies an L-shaped plot of land with an area of 2.9 hectares and is fenced with a brick wall. It is adjacent to the streets Ugaj, gen. Stefana Grota-Roweckiego, Poprzeczna, and Smutna and is located in the vicinity of the Catholic cemetery. A total of ca. 2,000 tombstones have survived at the site, the oldest of which dates back to 1843. According to the inscriptions on the stones, they were carved in stonemason’s workshops in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Piotrków Trybunalski, and Łódź. The area of the necropolis also holds post-war monuments to the victims of the Holocaust, including the Jews deported to Treblinka and those killed in the cemetery during the so-called Purim Operation.

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