News
In 2021, for the first time, the commemorative events “Brzesko: bond of memory” lasted for 2 days. On Saturday, October 2, the new exhibition was opened in the regional museum in Brzesko. Our association donated to the museum new 1929 photos by prof. Schaje Weiss and the metal bottle from Josef Schnur’s restaurant. The curator […]
This is the second part of the testimony of Joseph Polaniecki recorded in march 2021. – Was your family chasidic? – We were orthodox Jews, we were not hasidic. My grandfather had a beard, but my father was emancipated because he was in Germany, they didn’t wear beards. There were many chasidim in Brzesko – […]
In February and March 2021, I participated in several on-line meetings with Joseph Polaniecki. Father of Mr Polaniecki, Abraham Alter Polaniecki, born in Tarnów in 1892, was the son of Jonas Polaniecki and Chaja nee Luftig. He married Freidel (Frieda) Epstein from Brzesko in 1923 and moved to his wife’s home town. Freidel’s parents, merchant […]
On August 13, 2021, Dov Landau shared memories of his bar mitzvah, which took place in Brzesko in the summer of 1941. Bar mitzvah (from Hebrew בר מצוה, “son of the commandment”) is a Jewish religious ceremony which marks a 13-year-old boy’s assumption of religious and legal obgligations under Jewish law. This coming-of-age ritual is […]
That’s what Brzesko looked like after the great fire of 1904. It’s when seeing these pictures, that one can really appreciate the work of the Mayor Henoch Klapholz and the members of the city council who took responsibility for rebuilding the town. Here is how the fire of 1904 was described in the report of […]
The Jewish Müntz family (their name was also spelled as Minz) lived in Brzesko, Jadowniki and Nowy Wiśnicz. Mrs Anna Brzyska researched the history of Berisch Minz’s sons born in Jadowniki. The younger brother was Gerszon Szmuel Minz (born 1876), who after some time moved to Brzesko. The older brother, Wolf Minz (born 1872), stayed […]
Mordechaj (Markus) Dawid Brandstatter was born in a tenement house in the Brzesko Market Square in 1842. He was the son of a wealthy merchant, Chaskel Brandstatter. He attended rabbi Landau’s cheder, and later studied with the rabbi in Limanowa. In 1858 he married Sprinze Dawid, daughter of Abraham and Golda, born in 1839, and […]
Piotr Duda from the Brzesko municipal culture center has created extraordinary videos based on the 1929 photos by Schaje (Charles) Weiss. Old buildings, faces of people selling and buying things, families gathered together, curious of the man making pictures… It’s painful to think that so many of them perished a decade later in the Holocaust.
I would like to share today the story of Henoch Klapholz, who was one of the most outstanding persons in Brzesko history. In December 2020, great-grandson of Henoch, prof. Henry Klapholz, found several old photos, one of which most likely portrays Henoch Klapholz. Henoch Klapholz, son of Jukel and Liebe, was born in Nowy Sącz […]
It will be a long and very touching story about the Berl-Weiss-Gutfreund family of Brzesko and their extraordinary descendant, Lucia Weitzman. Chaim Berl/Gutfreund was born in Brzesko on June 17, 1879 as the second child of Jeruchem Gutfreund and Chaja Berl. At that time, the family lived in a small wooden house # 184 at […]