Before World War II the Polish small town of Oświęcim (German: Auschwitz) was home to a large Jewish community. Since 2000 the Jewish Centre Oświęcim remembers them and all Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Jewish Centre is located only two kilometres away from the former Auschwitz concentration camp.
History
The Polish small town of Oświęcim (German: Auschwitz) is located in the south of Poland near Cracow (Polish: Kraków). For centuries the town was torn between German and Polish spheres of influence. The town's name for example was changed several times, alternating between the Polish and the German one. Because of its location on the banks of the river Soła, Oświęcim received its town charter in the Middle Ages and became an important trading town. Jews have lived here since the early Middle Ages. In the 19th century, when this part of Poland belonged to the Habsburg Empire, Oświęcim became an important cultural centre for the local Jewish community. The number of community members grew steadily and several synagogues were built. After World War I and again part of Poland, the town grew rapidly. About 14,000 people lived there in 1939, half of them Jewish.
After the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in September 1939, the occupants immediately started taking measures against the Jews: Many had to close their shops or had to sell them to non-Jews. Some Jews tried to escape. The National Socialists destroyed all of the town's synagogues except for one, which was used as a store house. From February 1940 onwards several hundred Jews from Oświęcim had to conduct forced labour, many of them during the construction of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Later, all Jews had to move to a particular quarter of town. The SS deported about 600 Jews from Oświęcim to forced labour camps in October 1940. They expelled all remaining Jews from Oświęcim and drove them into the ghettos of the surrounding small localities of Sosnowiec, Będzin and Chrzanów. From there they were deported to extermination camps, amongst others to Auschwitz.
Victims
Almost all Jews from Oświęcim as well as Jewish refugees who stayed there were deported and murdered by the National Socialists. In total approximately 8,000 Jews from Oświęcim perished during the Holocaust.
The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients.
At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS.
Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation.
Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland.
Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period.
The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.
Remembrance
After the end of World War II there was no Jewish community in Oświęcim anymore. The name of the town, where the best known Nazi extermination camp was located, became a worldwide symbol for the persecution and murder of the European Jews. It was much less known that the town of Oświęcim had been home to a vivid Jewish community. In 1995, an American initiative created a foundation to establish a Jewish cultural centre in Oświęcim. The only remaining Jewish place of worship, the Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue was restored and refurnished. Since 2000 the Jewish Centre Oświęcim shows the history and culture of the Oświęcim Jews as well as temporary exhibitions. The museum is a branch of the »Museum of Jewish Heritage«, founded in 1997 in New York. It also operates a meeting and educational centre of international scope.
Possibilities
Educational programs for youth and adults; Readings, conferences and seminars on Jewish history, culture, religion, political topics and the Holocaust.
Open
October to March 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
April to September 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays
