History of the Jews in Kalisz
Encyclopedia
Located in the Poznań
Poznan
Poznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...

 province west of Łódź, Kalisz
Kalisz
Kalisz is a city in central Poland with 106,857 inhabitants , the capital city of the Kalisz Region. Situated on the Prosna river in the southeastern part of the Greater Poland Voivodeship, the city forms a conurbation with the nearby towns of Ostrów Wielkopolski and Nowe Skalmierzyce...

 was for centuries a border town between Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. One of the oldest cities in Poland, Kalisz also played a pivotal role in Polish Jewish history
History of the Jews in Poland
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...

: in 1264, Prince Bolesław V the Chaste, ruler of the western part of Poland (Wielkopolska), was the first to grant a charter to the local Jewish community, giving them settlement rights, legal protection, and certain religious and financial freedoms. This "Statute of Kalisz
Statute of Kalisz
The General Charter of Jewish Liberties known as the Statute of Kalisz was issued by the Duke of Greater Poland Boleslaus the Pious on September 8, 1264 in Kalisz...

" (largely copied from a similar statute in neighbouring Bohemia) was extended to the whole country by King Casimir the Great and expanded by later Polish rulers. It provided the legal foundation for Jewish rights in Poland.

History from the 12th Century to WWI

There had probably been Jews in Kalisz since the 12th century, when refugees from the Crusader massacres
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...

 fled to Poland from the Rhineland
Rhineland
Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....

. Coins from the area stamped with names in Hebrew letters reveal that Jewish minters were active in the town during the 12th century.

As Polish Jewry developed rapidly in the early modern period, so did the Kalisz Jewish community. In the mid-14th century, Kalisz Jews received permission to build a synagogue, which stood for over four centuries until destroyed by fire.

The Kalisz Jewish community played an important role in the Council of the Four Lands, the supracommunal body that represented Polish Jewry to the king. Jews made their living as moneylenders, craftsmen, and import-export merchants dealing in livestock, horses, agricultural produce and textiles. The Jewish merchants of Kalisz played an important role at the international fairs in the German cities of Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 and Breslau.

The Jewish population declined somewhat in the 17th and 18th centuries, due to the disruption of the Polish-Swedish War (1655–1659), as well as fires and plague in the 18th century. Even so, by 1793—when the region was annexed by Prussia—Jews owned about a quarter of the buildings in the town. At that time Jews constituted 40 percent of the population of Kalisz; they dominated the textile trade and made up half the craftsmen in the town. From 1815 until 1914 Kalisz was under Russian rule.

Russian authorities expelled Jewish residents who lacked Russian citizenship from Kalisz in 1881. A few years later, by 1897, the Jewish population of the town numbered 7,580 or about one-third of the total population.

Economy

Over the course of the 19th century, Jews continued to play a leading role in the local economy. Indeed, Christian business leaders in Kalisz, hostile to Jewish competition, pressured the Russian authorities to create a special Jewish quarter where Jews would be required to live. The quarter was established in 1827, when Jews made up about a third of the population. After the arrival of the railroad in the 1870s, industry developed rapidly. Products included textiles, woolens, and—most importantly -- lace
Lace
Lace is an openwork fabric, patterned with open holes in the work, made by machine or by hand. The holes can be formed via removal of threads or cloth from a previously woven fabric, but more often open spaces are created as part of the lace fabric. Lace-making is an ancient craft. True lace was...

.

Indeed, lacework and embroidery became the principal industry in Kalisz, which was known as the lacework capital of the Russian Empire. Many Jews made their living from it, whether as industrialists, middlemen, or factory workers. By the early 20th century, Jews owned 32 of the 67 factories in the town. In 1904, Jews made up over half of Kalisz lace workers. Most of the Jews in Kalisz, however, were poor laborers or artisans.

Religious Life

Kalisz had already become an important spiritual center by the 17th century. In the 19th century, the pietist revival movement called "Hasidism
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...

" began to have an impact on the town. The first Hasidic sect to gain followers in Kalisz were the Kotskers, followed by the Ger
Ger (Hasidic dynasty)
Ger, or Gur is a Hasidic dynasty originating from Ger, the Yiddish name of Góra Kalwaria, a small town in Poland....

 and Alexander Hasidim
Aleksander (Hasidic dynasty)
The Aleksander chasidic movement flourished in Poland from 1880 until it was largely destroyed by Nazi Germany during World War II.Now nearly extinct, the Aleksander Hasidim were the second largest Hasidic group in pre-Holocaust Poland.Between the world wars, Hasidic Jews from all over flocked to...

. By the 1890s Kalisz boasted two large synagogues and close to 40 smaller prayer houses. Three more synagogues, including one in the style of German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism refers to various beliefs, practices and organizations associated with the Reform Jewish movement in North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. In general, it maintains that Judaism and Jewish traditions should be modernized and should be compatible with participation in the...

, were built in Kalisz in the first decade of the 20th century.

In the last half-century of Russian rule, as was the case throughout the Russian Empire, traditionalist Jews (both Hasidic and non-Hasidic) battled modernizers over issues such as education and the rabbinate.

Political Parties

Kalisz also had an array of Jewish political parties around the turn of the 20th century: mainstream Zionist, labor Zionist
Labor Zionism
Labor Zionism can be described as the major stream of the left wing of the Zionist movement. It was, for many years, the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizational structure...

, religious Zionist
Religious Zionism
Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and Jewish religious faith...

, and socialist Bundist. These differing political visions were mirrored in the Jewish schools of Kalisz which by World War I included a bilingual Jewish high school, two Yiddish-oriented schools, and an Orthodox educational network of 1,800 students.

World War I and its Aftermath

During the first year of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, the invading German Army destroyed much of Kalisz and killed 33 Jews in the town.

In March 1919, Polish nationalists organized a pogrom—one of several postwar attacks throughout Poland—in which two Jews were murdered. An attempt to organize a second pogrom in 1920 was foiled by organized Jewish resistance.

History in the Inter-war Years

Kalisz had a population of 15,300 Jews (almost 30 percent of the total population), according to the 1931 Polish census.

The Jewish neighborhood of Kalisz was in the northwest area of the central city, along the main boulevard -- Nowa Street. Nowa and adjacent streets were the site of the Great Synagogue and the House of Study. Along its expanse were the offices of Jewish organizations and clubs, as well as many Jewish shops ranging from large stores to small shops to tiny holes in the wall: bookstores, taverns, shops selling Hebrew and Yiddish newspapers, butchers, fish stores, and boutiques.

The bridge that carried Nowa Street over a branch of the Prosna River
Prosna
The Prosna is a river in central Poland, a tributary of the Warta river , with a length of 217 kilometres and the basin area of 4,925 km2 .-Towns:*Gorzów Śląski*Praszka*Wieruszów*Grabów nad Prosną*Kalisz...

 was the heart of Jewish activity. It was a place of constant traffic, with Jews coming and going between their homes and places of work, synagogues, and communal institutions. On this bridge business deals were closed; the unemployed stood and hoped to be chosen for a few hours' work; people gave and listened to political speeches and arguments; vendors sold snacks and drinks.

Jews lived in other parts of town as well. Kanonicka Street was also a heavily Jewish area and served as home of the kehillah (community governing body) offices. Well-to-do Jewish families lived in various areas of the city.

Jewish café life also thrived. The most popular gathering place was the Udzialowa Café, where many people had regular tables and meeting times. Mayer Café, renowned for its delicious cakes, was the place for the Polish gentry, the Polish and Jewish middle class, professionals, and intellectuals. Young people hung out at the Café George, where members of all the Jewish youth movements could mingle—or, when politics dictated, sit at separate tables.

The Jews of Kalisz were not immune from the antisemitism that swept across Poland in the late 1930s. The town had an active antisemitic press, and bands of ruffians would often attack Jewish traders and peddlers on isolated roads as they were making their way to area markets. The situation deteriorated to the point that in 1936 a delegation of merchants traveled to Warsaw to present their case to the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Interior.

In 1937, Jews were forced to set up shop in a separate area in the town market, and Polish nationalists stood guard to ensure that Christians did not patronize Jewish-owned stalls. A year later, Kalisz was transferred to the Poznan district, where kosher slaughtering was prohibited. Even after intensive lobbying, the Kalisz slaughterers were permitted to produce only a small amount of kosher meat, which did not suffice for the Jewish population.

In 1939, on the eve of the German invasion, the Jewish population of Kalisz numbered over 20,000.

Economy

In the interwar period, Kalisz, which had a long history of producing lace and other textiles, became a center for the garment industry. In 1921, of the over 500 Jewish-owned factories and enterprises, 400 produced clothing or textiles (other products included metals, lumber, and leather). Flour from the 12 Jewish-owned mills in Kalisz reached all parts of Poland. There was also a handful of Jewish professionals.

Since Jewish workers constituted 45 percent of all wage-earners in Kalisz, it is not surprising that Jews played an important role in the town's trade unions. Some of the unions were open to all: the Embroiderers' Union had Polish, Jewish, and German members. Other unions were more segregated: the Garment Union organization had only Jewish members, and Polish tailors and garment workers belonged to the Polish Craftsmen Society. Jewish unions included associations of leather workers, clerks, porters, and female domestic worker
Domestic worker
A domestic worker is a man, woman or child who works within the employer's household. Domestic workers perform a variety of household services for an individual or a family, from providing care for children and elderly dependents to cleaning and household maintenance, known as housekeeping...

s. The latter advocated for the rights of young women who came to Kalisz from small towns and who were often subject to the whims of their employers. The association for female domestic workers helped to ensure fair treatment, decent wages, and a rest day on the Sabbath.

The two Jewish financial institutions established after World War I, the Merchants' Bank and the Cooperative Bank, failed during the Depression. As the economy deteriorated—and as the Polish government continued to adopt anti-Jewish economic policies—many industrial workers were forced into petty commerce or peddling with few prospects for a meaningful livelihood. As was the case in Jewish communities throughout Poland, the Kalisz Jewish community founded cooperative credit and banking institutions to assist the impoverished Jewish population.

Government

The kehillah, or official governing body for the Jewish community, was dominated by the ultra-Orthodox Agudah political party. It administered the Jewish welfare institutions of Kalisz: old-age home, Talmud Torah (school for poor children), orphanage, Jewish hospital (founded in 1835), and free clinic. The kehillah also oversaw the ritual bath and the two yeshivahs in the town, "Magen Avraham" and "Etz Hayyim."

The traditionalist Agudah majority of the kehillah faced various challenges during the interwar period, including a boycott of kosher slaughterers organized by the Zionist opposition members in order to cut off the tax revenue that was the mainstay of kehillah income. That income was declining anyway, as the economic situation of the Jews of Kalisz deteriorated. From 1932 to 1935, revenues decreased by 30 percent.

Politics

As was true throughout much of interwar Poland, Jewish life in Kalisz was heavily politicized. The non-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...

 Agudah
World Agudath Israel
World Agudath Israel , usually known as the Aguda, was established in the early twentieth century as the political arm of Ashkenazi Torah Judaism, in succession to Agudas Shlumei Emunei Yisroel...

 boasted one of the strongest local branches in the country, with separate Workers of Agudah and Daughters of Agudah associations established in 1928. Zionism was an important influence as well. In 1920, a public celebration in honor of Britain's acceptance of the Palestine mandate was attended by thousands, and many offered contributions for the purchase of land in Palestine.

The socialist Zionist party Poale Zion
Poale Zion
Poale Zion was a Movement of Marxist Zionist Jewish workers circles founded in various cities of the Russian Empire about the turn of the century after the Bund rejected Zionism in 1901.-Formation and early years:Poale Zion parties and organisations were started across the Jewish diaspora in the...

 sponsored a "Worker's Home" club, which organized lectures, Hebrew classes, and performances and offered a library and reading room to members. In 1900, a branch of the secular Jewish socialist Bund was founded in Kalisz. Jews were also active in general political life, with eleven Jewish residents elected to the municipal council as late as 1939.

Youth movements

Youth movements played an important role in the Kalisz Jewish community, and could be found on all points of the political spectrum from the right-wing Zionist Betar
Betar
The Betar Movement is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir Jabotinsky. It has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group...

 organization to the communist Zionist Borochov
Ber Borochov
Dov Ber Borochov was a Marxist Zionist and one of the founders of the Labor Zionist movement as well as a pioneer in the study of Yiddish as a language....

 organization. Some young Jews joined Zionist training farms in the countryside outside Kalisz to prepare for emigration to Palestine; many eventually emigrated. A number of Jewish communists from Kalisz volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

. Ten of them fell in battle.

Schools

The first modern Jewish school in Kalisz, with subjects taught in Russian, opened in 1862. Most children attended one of the seven Cheder
Cheder
A Cheder is a traditional elementary school teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language.-History:...

s (traditional schools for basic Jewish literacy) in Kalisz. A women's trade school opened early in the 20th century, and a bilingual Jewish gymnasium (high school) was founded in 1913. In 1917, the religious Zionist Mizrahi party founded a school as part of a national network. Orthodox educational institutions included a kindergarten, a trade school, and a girls' school called Havatselet ("Lily").

During the interwar period, two Yiddish schools were established by the labor Zionist Poale Zion group and the secular socialist "Bund." Many local Jewish children attended Polish public schools. A branch of the national TOZ organization, dedicated to the health of Jewish children, established summer camps for the weak and sick children of the town.

Cultural life

Kalisz had a flourishing Jewish cultural life. In the late 1920s and 1930s, two Yiddish weeklies kept the community abreast of local, national, and international news: the Agudah-leaning Kalisher lebn ("Kalisz Life") and the Zionist-leaning Kalisher vokh ("Kalisz Week").

A group of young people established a branch of YIVO, the Jewish Scientific Society, and conducted research on Jewish folklore and linguistics. The leading figure in Jewish literary life in Kalisz was poet and author Rosa Jakobowicz (Jacobson). The daughter of a rabbi, she studied Hebrew and religious subjects in her youth. After moving to Kalisz as a newlywed, she published her poetry in various journals and periodicals, including a cycle of poems on biblical women, the first of its kind in Yiddish. A collection of her poetry was published in 1924, entitled Mayne gezangen (My Songs). Jakobowicz died in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942. The writer Shimon Horonecki (Horonski) (1889–1939) lived in Kalisz for some years and wrote novels in which can be found descriptions of working class Jewish life in Kalisz.

The performing arts were also cultivated in Kalisz. Jews could enjoy performances of a Jewish orchestra, a brass band, and a theatrical troupe. Local Bund members were especially active in this arena, creating a cultural club, a drama club, a Working Women's Club, and the Comet Amateur Theater.

Sports

Throughout Europe, sports had become an important part of Jewish life, as the political theories of the period stressed the cultivation of the body as well as the spirit and the mind. Each Jewish political party had its own sports club, and the Gymnastics and Sports Association was an important non-political athletic, cultural, and educational organization for youth. The Jewish Rowers' Club of Kalisz participated in competitions at the national level.

Religious life

The foremost personality in the religious life of prewar Kalisz was Rabbi Yehezkel Livshits, who served as rabbi from 1907 to 1932. President of the Rabbinical Association of Poland, a Zionist, and a friend of Chief Rabbi of Palestine Abraham Isaac Kook
Abraham Isaac Kook
Abraham Isaac Kook was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine, the founder of the Religious Zionist Yeshiva Merkaz HaRav, Jewish thinker, Halachist, Kabbalist and a renowned Torah scholar...

, Livshits was a force for solidarity and unity in the Kalisz community owing to his character and high standing. After his death, Menahem Mendl Alter, son of Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter
Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter
Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter , also known by the title of his main work, the Sfas Emes, was a Hasidic rabbi who succeeded his grandfather, Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter, as the av beis din and Rav of Góra Kalwaria, Poland , and succeeded the Rebbe, Reb Heynekh of Alexander, as Rebbe of the Gerrer...

 the Hasidic Rebbe of Ger, was chosen in part because of the increasing influence of the Gerer Hasidim in Kalisz.

Besides Ger, which counted ten shtieblakh
Shtiebel
A shtiebel is a place used for communal Jewish prayer. In contrast to a formal synagogue, a shtiebel is far smaller and approached more casually. It is typically as small as a room in a private home or a place of business which is set aside for the express purpose of prayer, or it may be as large...

(small prayer houses) in the town, other Hasidic groups represented in Kalisz were Alexander, Sochaczow, Skiernewicz, Kotzk, Sokolow, Parisow, and Radomsk. In addition, the Rebbes of Zychlin and Wola lived in Kalisz. There were so many shtieblakh in Kalisz that some non-Hasidic or non-religious Jews reportedly even closed their windows on Friday nights to escape the loud singing.

During the interwar period, the two formal centers of religious life were the traditionalist Great Synagogue and the modern, western-style New Synagogue, called the German Shul. The latter boasted an organ and a choir that performed pieces of liturgical music by both German-Jewish and Russian-Jewish composers.

External links

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