Association
Memory and Dialogue. Common History.

Aron Bukspan was born in Staszów on June 19, 1850; he was the son of the tailor Herszl Bukspan and Ruchla née Weintraub. Aron married Brzesko-born Scheindel Laje Matzner (1855), daughter of Simel Matzner and Syma Ruchel Roder, and moved to his wife’s hometown. Between 1876 and 1902, 13 children were born in this family, […]

Some years back I used to think that there were hardly any material traces of Jewish presence left in Brzesko. However, over time, it turned out that in addition to the new Jewish cemetery on Czarnowiejska Street, the synagogue and mikvah buildings on today’s Puszkina Street (former Łazienna), the boundaries (and even a piece of […]

I would like to start this article about the Brzesko Laub family with the history of the tenement house, the current address of which is Legionów Piłsudskiego 1, and the pre-war address – Słotwińska st., 41. In the mid-19th century, a small wooden house used to stand in this place. The 1847 map shows that […]

On June 20, 2023, Hasidim from all over the world came to Krakow  for the bicentenary yahrzait of Rabbi Kalman Kalonimos Epstein, Maor VaShemesh. Krakow rabbi Kalman Kalonimos Epstein (1754-1823), called Maor VaShemesh (From the Light and Sun) after the title of his main work, was a student of outstanding tzaddikim Elimelech from Leżajsk and […]

By Dina Feldman My father’s side – the starting point of falling in love with Poland More than a decade ago I have started to search my roots in Poland. Then I focused mainly on my family from Piotrków Trybunalski, the birthplace of my father Abraham. My father used to tell us a lot about […]

The patriarch of the Kapel/Kapler family (this surname was first written as Kapel, but later changed to Kapler) Menasche was born in Brzesko on June 3, 1866, as the son of Hersch and Perel Kapel. He came from an ordinary – not rabbinical – family, and yet he became a dayan (rabbinical judge), which was […]

Despite intensive archival research, it has still not been possible to determine what happened to 31 former students and graduates of the Brzesko gymnasium. With all probability, most of them perished during the war, but we couldn’t find any documents that would confirm it. These are: 1. Bernstein Mindla Born in Bochnia on February 26, […]

On November 22, 1940, the Jewish Council in Brzesko published an announcement about the search for a doctor in the “Gazeta Żydowska” (“Jewish newspaper”). Doctor Moshe (Maurycy) Gross responded to this appeal. Moshe Gross, son of Markus Hirsch Gross and Róża nee Bornstein, was born in Kraków on August 19, 1909. He studied medicine in […]

In 2023, we hosted an exceptionally large group of descendants of Brzesko Jews in Brzesko. Among them there were descendants of the Fischman-Hammer family, Mrs. Yona Kohen and her son Uri. Research in several archives resulted in the reconstruction of a substantial part of this family’s history. The oldest known ancestors of the Fischman-Hammer family, […]

Some time ago, I came across a card on one of the auction sites. It was written by Blume Rosa Kohs from Brzesko on January 16, 1893. This minimal information helped to recreate the history of another Jewish family from Brzesko. When writing this letter, Blume Rosa was 34 years old and was raising nine […]