News

21.11.2023 | Redaktor
Kohs-Bierenbaum 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 […]

20.11.2023 | Redaktor
Brzesko Branch of the Westreich Family Tree

by Allan Westreich Book excerpt from The Westreich Family Tree: Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together Using Traditional and Genetic Genealogy.  Edited by Allan H. Westreich, Ph.D.  Published by JewishGen Press, 2023. I’ve been interested in my family history for a long time.  My first active questioning about it was back in high school when my […]

03.10.2023 | Redaktor
Józef Topolski from Jadowniki

Józef Topolski was born in Jadowniki in 1913. The Topolski family had a large farm. Because of untimely death of Stanisław Topolski, young Józef had to take care of the farm. In 1942, Józef Topolski joined the Peasant Battalions – the underground resistance movement which was active in rural areas. Together with several colleagues – […]

02.10.2023 | Redaktor
Wincenty Cebula from Jadowniki

Wincenty Cebula was born on September 28, 1922 in the village of Jadowniki as the son of Franciszek and Maria née Tyka. During World War II, he joined the structures of the Peasant Battalions – the folk conspiracy operating near Brzesko. He was involved in the activities of the group led by Józef Topolski “Szpak”, […]

30.09.2023 | Redaktor
Brzesko: Bond of memory 2023

In the beginning of September we hosted in Brzesko an exceptionally large group of descendants of Brzesko Jews who came to the hometown of their ancestors so that to take part in the Shabbaton – to celebrate Jewish life in Brzesko and join the March of Remembrance on the anniversary of the liquidation of the […]

28.08.2023 | Redaktor
Jewish students of the Brzesko gymnasium murdered in the Holocaust

Research conducted in several archives allowed to establish that 61 former Jewish students of the Brzesko gymnasium were murdered in the Holocaust 1. Nela Beidner Born in Jadowniki on May 16, 1906, daughter of merchant Beidner/Bruh and Sara nee Brandstatter. Attended gymnasium in 1917-1923; back then she lived together with her family at the Market […]

25.08.2023 | Redaktor
Education of Jewish children in Brzesko

Jewish boys from religious families usually started their education at the age of three. At that time, their parents enrolled them in cheders, i.e. elementary religious schools, where the boys mastered the art of reading and writing for the first two years and later began learning Chumash (the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses). The […]

05.06.2023 | Redaktor
The Bransdorfs from Brzesko

By Henry Benjamin Winkler The English writer, L.P. Hartley, begins his novel, The Go-Between, with the oft-quoted sentence:           The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. For many Jews of my family and my generation, our past is, literally, in a foreign country.  And, our previous generations did things quite differently. […]

05.06.2023 | Redaktor
Testimony of Leon Epstein: devastation of the old Jewish cemetery

While searching the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute, I found the testimony of Leon (Leib) Epstein, the uncle of the still living Polaniecki brothers. (Polaniecki family, parents and four sons, fled from Brzesko to the Soviet Union at the beginning of the war, thanks to which they managed to survive. After the war, the […]

17.04.2023 | Redaktor
Wojciech Kotfis from Uszew

In 2002-2004, stidents from the Public Secondary School in Uszew, under the supervision of their teacher, Mrs Teresa Czesak, carried out an educational project entitled “Memory Saves Nations”. Within this project, the students researched the story of Uszew resident Wojciech Kotfis and the Jewish Goldberger family who were shot in May 1944. The pupils then […]