The newly founded town attracted mostly German settlers and workers from the neighbouring villages, but it also soon gained its first Jewish residents, with their influx intensifying after the construction of the Warsaw-Vienna railway. Most Jews of Żyrardów lived in a district established on the estate of Ruda Guzowska (former Mariampol manor), on the eastern side of today’s Mireckiego Street. The local Jewish community grew dynamically in the last three decades of the 19^th century, with the number of local Jews increasing from 70 to as many as 3,000. The Jewish district of Żyrardów formally formed part of the village of Ruda Guzowska until 1916.

The religious life of the Jewish community had a weekly rhythm different from that of the Christians, which is why Jews did not work in factories and instead focused on trade and crafts. The heart of the Jewish district was Wąska Street (today’s Szulmana Street). In 1874, the governorate authorities allowed for the establishment of a Jewish religious community in Ruda Guzowska. The first house of prayer was founded in a private, wooden house in Wąska Street. Not long afterwards, Count Feliks Sobański donated land for the erection of a synagogue and establishment of a cemetery to the Jewish community. In the later years, Jews would also assemble for prayer in private homes of wealthy Hasidim.

At the end of the first decade of the 20^th century, Żyrardów made efforts to receive town rights, filing an appropriate application with the Russian administration. It is believed that at that point, as many as 28,000 people lived in Żyrardów, Ruda Guzowska, Mariampol, and Teklinów, 16% of whom were Jews and 15% were Evangelicals (mainly Germans). However, Żyrardów was only granted the status of a town in 1916, when the area was occupied by Germany. The local Jews owned the vast majority of the 370 local shops and over 100 craft workshops, including 50 out of all 60 shoemaker’s workshops.

In the interwar period, the share of Jews in the total population stabilised around 10–12%. The economic situation of the Jewish community was much worse than it had been at the beginning of the century. The entire population of the town was struggling with skyrocketing unemployment rates. The most influential Jewish political parties in Żyrardów were the Orthodox Agudath, the socialist Bund, and Zionists from the right-wing Mizrachi and the social-democratic Poale Zion. Representatives of the community sat on the Municipal Council.

In 1910, a modern cheder was opened in Żyrardów, attended by ca. 100 several-years-old boys. The curriculum included learning to read and write in Hebrew, memorising and reciting fragments of the Torah, as well as selected elements of secular knowledge. A private school for Jewish children was established in the town in 1918, bearing the official name of Eliza Orzeszkowa Primary School since the school year 1925/26. As much as 99% of its students were Jews, but the language of instruction was Polish. There were two Jewish libraries in Żyrardów – the Tsukunf Library (left-leaning) and the I.L. Peretz Library (Orthodox) – as well as an amateur drama club. Local Jewish sportsmen could join the Maccabi club.

Żyrardów was invaded by the Wehrmacht in mid-September 1939, with the Germans immediately introducing repressions against the Jewish population. The local Judenrat (Jewish Council) was established in November 1939. In December 1940, all Jews from Żyrardów were ordered to move to the ghetto formed in the block delimited by the streets Mireckiego, Narutowicza, Okrzei, and 1 Maja Streets. The ghetto population also came to include Jews displaced from the territories incorporated into the Third Reich and from smaller towns in Błońsk District. It is estimated that ca. 5,000 people were imprisoned in the Jewish quarter and obliged to work for the Germans. The most destitute ghetto residents received aid from the Social Assistance Committee, which ran a soup kitchen in the quarter. In January of the following year, the authorities of the Warsaw District began to liquidate smaller Jewish quarters, deporting their prisoners to the Warsaw Ghetto. Jews from the ghetto in Żyrardów were displaced by mid-February. Most of them were eventually murdered in the Nazi German death camp in Treblinka. Only a handful of Jewish Survivors returned to Żyrardów after the war. In the spring of 1945, the town had ca. 20 Jewish residents, most of whom left Poland over the following years.

The Jewish cemetery in Żyrardów, located at the corner of today’s Mireckiego Street and Konopnickiej Street, was probably established after 1874. Beforehand, the local Jews had buried their dead in the cemetery in Wiskitki. The necropolis currently occupies a trapezoid-shaped plot with an area of 0.8724 ha. Ca. 150 tombstones have survived at the site to the present day (the oldest identified stone dates back to 1883, the newest – to 1938). The internal layout of the cemetery, with graves arranged into rows, has been only partially preserved. Due to the high artistic value of the surviving tombstones, the Żyrardów necropolis is considered one of the most interesting burial sites in Masovia. The stones are clearly the work of highly skilled stonemasons. They were probably all carved at the same workshop run by subsequent generations of artisans. Apart from traditional matzevot, the cemetery also holds tombstones in more original shapes, for example black granite obelisks on the graves of the Oksners, a local industrialist family, or a monument in the form of a broken tree. The tombstone marking the grave of Eli Lubczyński and Mendel Mejman is particularly interesting. The two men, murdered during a worker demonstration in Żyrardów in 1906, are commemorated with a red sandstone monument with an engraved hand holding a hammer. The vast majority of epitaphs engraved on the tombstones are in Hebrew. The cemetery was largely destroyed by the Germans during World War II, with uprooted matzevot used to pave streets and courtyards.

The necropolis remained out of use after the war. Neglected and gradually devastated in the following decades, it was formally closed in 1964 by a decision of the provincial administrative authorities. The site was cleaned up and fenced three years later, with the works financed from the donations of Jewish Survivors from all over the world. A monument to the victims of the Holocaust was erected at the cemetery. It has the form of a tall obelisk topped with a candle flame.

The cemetery was entered into the register of monuments on 18 February 1992 under the number 868 A.

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