Excerpts from:

“Polaniec - Urban-historicalstudy”

by Andrew Wojciechowski

 
The earliest known Jewish community in Polaniec was established in the 14th century.  The Jewish population before World War II, according to the 1931 census,  was 1,500.  The cemetery was established in 1647. The last known burial took place  in 1940.  Existence of a Synagogue was confirmed in the 1727 bishop's inspection.
 

Polaniec still has an existing Jewish cheder, a one-story, 19th century stone building  (at least it was standing there in 1987, while I was conducting an architectural survey for the State Preservation Authority, Conservation Office, Lublin Province).  At that time the building was occupied by a small workshop producing cardboard boxes. 
 

The most significant and interesting fact  about Polaniec is that, in the town stood a wooden synagogue, covered with wooden shingles,  built circa 1785,  located at Mielecka Street. The synagogue was burned down by the Nazis in 1942.  The synagogue had walls decorated with colorful polychrome, which fortunately for us had been copied by architecture students from Warsaw's Polytechnic prior to World War II.  Today, colored copies of fragments of the polychrome can be seen in the collection of  The Institute of Art - Polish Academy of  Sciences, 26/28 Dluga  Street in  Warsaw.  A photograph of the synagogue survived the Holocaust and the negative is held in the collection of the above institute.          

In Polaniec, at the market place (present name: Plac Uniwersalu Polanieckiego), I discovered a one-story house, number 10, built of stone and wood in the end of 18th century.  It is the oldest existing Jewish structure to be found in the town.  One of  the rooms facing the market place, with an arch shaped stone ceiling, was used as a small grocery store by a Jewish family until 1942. 
 

I personally conducted an urban-architectural survey needed to collect data for my book and  interviewed some elderly  Polish citizens who witnessed  the extermination of Jews by the Nazis and helped some of  the survivors to hide in a safe place to the end of the war.
 

Acknowledgements: The information on this page was contributed by Andrew Wojciechowski  whose book, “Polaniec – Urban-historicalstudy” was published in Lublin in 1987 (written in Polish).  The book is based on historical archives and a personal on-site survey and interviews conducted by Mr. Wojciechowski, who is a professional genealogist and translator.

This web site is authored and maintained by Michael Gottlieb, whose paternal ancestors lived in Plontch since at least the middle of the 18th century.  The site is dedicated to memory of those ancestors, many of whom were  slaughtered during the Nazi Holocaust. 

                             
Last updated on Monday, November 06, 2006
                   

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