The First to be Destroyed : The Jewish Community of Kleczew and the Beginning of the Final Solution

The Jewish community of the city of Kleczew came into existence in the sixteenth century. It remained large and strong throughout the next four hundred years, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it constituted 40-60% of the total population. The German army entered Kleczew on September 15, 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. The communities of Kleczew and the vicinity were among the first Jewish collectives in Europe to be totally destroyed. The events presented in this book reveal that the organization of deportations and the methods of mass murder conducted in this district, by Kommando Lange, served as a model that would be applied later in the death camps during the mass extermination of Polish and European Jewry. If so, it was in the woods near Kleczew that the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” began.

The Jewish community of the city of Kleczew came into existence in the sixteenth century. It remained large and strong throughout the next four hundred years, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it formed between 40 and 60% of the total population. The Kahal of Kleczew acquired its autonomy in the eighteenth century, and formed a separate Jewish quarter of the municipal infrastructure, possessing a synagogue, a cemetery, a ritual bath, and a cheder. In the years 1918-1939, Jewish life in Kleczew developed strongly political-social aspects, with branches of multiple political groups and organizations forming and attracting members. After the outbreak of war in 1939, Kleczew’s Jewish inhabitants were the first victims of the Nazis’ mass extermination campaign, murdered between September and November 1941. This edited volume presents and explores the history of this complex, long-lived Jewish community.