Publication Date

6-2023

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Program

PhD in Jewish Studies

Concentration

Jewish history

Keywords

Polish, Jewish, Community

Advisors

Michael Shmidman

Abstract

Today, there are no openly practicing Jews residing in Chmielnik, a small town in eastern Poland. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Jews comprised at least 80 percent of the overall population: an estimated 10,275 out of 12,500 people. In October 1945, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency stated that there were precisely 61 Jews registered in Chmielnik. What happened to the other 10,214? This thesis attempts to find out. In my monograph I provide a microhistory of Chmielnik—a town whose Jewish roots trace back to 1556—with a special emphasis on World War II. Since the town itself was founded in 1551, only a few years prior to the establishment of the local Jewish community, it is worthy of note that there was a Jewish presence in Chmielnik since the town’s earliest days. My examination culminates in the war’s immediate aftermath, at which point, the town’s demographic profile had shifted entirely. Given the fact that the majority of the town’s Jews perished in the Holocaust, Chmielnik’s few returning Jews then comprised a miniscule fraction of the town’s overall population. But it is not only the Jewish demographics that have shifted; the population of the town has decreased by more than half since the eve of World War II. As of 2007, it totaled about 4,000 residents, in 2018, 3,743, and in December 2021, 3,557. According to local historian Piotr Krawczyk, that overall decline is linked directly to the fact that there are no longer any Jewish residents there. In his words, “No Jews here; no people.” In other words: there can be no history of Chmielnik without the history of Jews there. Nor can there be any future.

Unfortunately, despite several modern-day efforts at preserving Jewish Chmielnik, the fact is that this town, as it existed for almost 500 years, is no more. There were hundreds of Jewish towns all over Poland—to say nothing of greater Europe—whose Jewish populations were annihilated by the Holocaust. Put succinctly, the story of Chmielnik is the story of most of Poland’s Jews. It is a microcosm of towns just like it, with Jewish populations around 10,000 and primarily Jewish in their population makeup. Despite the plethora of Holocaust literature that abounds, smaller Jewish communities have traditionally received short shrift in Holocaust- related monographs. This is in contrast to the treatment of large Jewish communities like Warsaw, or Łódź, for example. This is particularly surprising, and problematic, because the “shtetl”—defined as “a township with 1,000 to 15,000 Jews, who formed at least a third of the total population” by historian Yehuda Bauer—holds such a prominent place in European Jewish life, and so many caricatures have been drawn based on this paucity of knowledge. Few attempts have been made to find out what actually happened in the years leading up to and during theHolocaust. The towns’ destruction seems to be the most important event that ever took place in them. This dissertation represents a small effort to change that regrettable trend.

Among the subject matter addressed in this thesis is the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath, the persecution of Chmielnik Jewry under German occupation, Jewish collaboration with the Nazi authorities; Polish-Jewish relations under German occupation; and the abortive attempts of Chmielnik’s surviving Jews at rebuilding Jewish communal life. This dissertation also strives to account for the relatively larger pool of Chmielnik Jews who survived World War II. In order to better understand Jewish responses during the war, I will also discuss Jewish communal life in interwar Chmielnik insofar as its religious, educational, cultural, socio- political, ideological, and philanthropic institutions and movements; as well as Polish-Jewish relations in Chmielnik during the interwar period.

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