Strzyżów
A small market town in the hills of southern Poland, on the Wisłok river south-west of Rzeszów. For four centuries it had a Jewish community, and from it the Auerhan family came to New York.
Read the full Encyclopedia of Strzyżów: history, rabbis, the Holocaust, sites today and records, with sources for every entry.
A town in Galicia
Jews are known in Strzyżów from the sixteenth century. From the 1770s until the end of the First World War the town lay in Galicia, the Austrian crown land carved from old Poland, and its Jews lived under Habsburg rule. By 1870 the community kept two rabbis, a synagogue, a Hasidic kloyz (study house), a bathhouse, a poorhouse and a cemetery. Boys began cheder, religious school, at three or four. In 1892 the town's Jews founded a credit society.
| Year | Jews in Strzyżów |
|---|---|
| 1824 | 560 |
| 1870 | 933 members of the community |
| 1912 | 1,150 of 2,237 inhabitants |
| 1939 | about 1,050 to 1,300, by different counts |
Leaving for America
Like many Galician towns, Strzyżów saw its young people leave for America in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. Those who left were spared what came after.
The Holocaust
German forces took Strzyżów in September 1939. On 15 September they shot four Jews on the edge of the town for refusing to sweep the streets on the Sabbath. Between 24 and 26 June 1942 the Jews who remained were driven to the ghetto in Rzeszów. From there, in 1942 and 1943, most were deported to the death camp at Bełżec; others were shot in Rzeszów and in the surrounding forests. The Rzeszów ghetto was liquidated in 1943. Few of Strzyżów's Jews survived; at least one, a doctor, lived through the war in the Soviet Union.
Remembering
Survivors and emigrants gathered their memories in a memorial book, The Book of Strzyzow and Vicinity, which JewishGen has translated into English and published free online. To add the name of someone murdered in the Holocaust to Yad Vashem's records, see how to submit a Page of Testimony.