Pinczow Poland And the Great Old Synagogue Where My Family Worshiped In The 1700’s And Where Many Of Them Perished – World Monuments Fund Restoring Synagogue

I have been sharing my research and have been working with Witold Wrzosinski with the Foundation For Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland. The following is an excerpt from an email from Witold to me:

You have found the grave of Yochanan HaCohen  Fogel, father-in-law of Hersz Wolf Baumwoll and great-grandfather of Nathan Baumwoll. He came from Pinczow and was a Cohen. I would like you to see if we can find any of them or any about them.

My family lived their. Many never left until they were marched to death. I am searching for them now.

The following is from World Monuments Fund about the Pińczów Synagogue in Poland:

Pińczów Synagogue, built at the turn of the 17th century, is the last surviving Jewish monument in the city of Pińczów, once a thriving economic and cultural Jewish center. The synagogue is unusual both for its age as well as its adaptation of a Renaissance architectural style. Inside, large sections of polychromic patterning, attributed to the Jewish painter Jehuda Leib, decorate the synagogue’s main prayer hall and porch. Interior murals, some of which date from the 1600s, are the oldest synagogue fresco paintings in the country. The town of Pińczów, which, for centuries, had benefited from its reputation for ethnic and religious diversity, was largely destroyed by German troops in the fall of 1939. The vast majority of the town’s Jewish population was later killed, many sent to Auschwitz, and much of the community’s cultural heritage destroyed. The synagogue itself was vandalized by Nazi occupation troops, and then damaged in fighting during the final year of the war.

When WMF began work at Pińczów in the spring of 2005, the building showed the affects of years of neglect and defacement. Our conservation efforts focused specifically on the women’s gallery and the kahal room, used for meetings of elders, which house some of the synagogue’s finest wall paintings and which had suffered from years of deterioration. A team of conservationists worked to desalinize and restore wall paintings, remove and replace crumbling plaster sections and joints, and clean the exposed wall underneath. The team also replaced damaged window frames and stone elements, and repaired several of the building’s walls. WMF’s project was completed in 2005. Some of the inscriptions and scrolls found during our work there have supplied valuable new research material for academics studying Jewish history in Poland.

Pińczów Synagogue is an emblem of local history, prosperity and the tragic results of the Holocaust. WMF’s conservation efforts at the synagogue highlight the artistic and cultural triumphs of the Jewish community from the 16th to the early 20th century and also acknowledge the neglect of the site due to the loss of the Jewish community in the aftermath of World War II.. Our work also recognizes the significance of the site to a global audience, as both a historical and artistic monument; our efforts to preserve the synagogue’s wall paintings and interior decorations will ensure the site remains in good condition, enduring even as the Jewish community that once surrounded it has largely disappeared.

The Following is an excerpt from Wikipedia about Pińczów Poland and the fate of the Jews and my family during WWII:

Pińczów was destroyed by Germans in September 1939 (see Polish Defensive War), and almost all Jews, who had accounted for about 70% of the town’s population, were killed or sent to extermination camps. Most Pińczów’s Jews were murdered in the death camp Treblinka. The Jewish cemetery was also destroyed. Some Jews of Pińczów survived the Holocaust by hiding in nearby forests. Some, though not many, were hidden by Polish farmers until the end of the war. The Republic of Pińczów was a short-lived Polish uprising, which took place in July – August 1944. Units of the Home Army and other underground organizations managed to push Germans from the area of app. 1000 km²., which stretched from Pińczów to Działoszyce, and from Nowy Korczyn to Nowe Brzesko. The resistance was very active here, there were two attacks on a local Gestapo prison, in which hundreds of Poles were freed.

It is one of the oldest synagogues in Poland, built in 1594-1609. The designer was probably the Florentian Santi Gucci. During World War II it was vandalized by the Nazi Germans, then damaged during fighting in 1944, and it is inactive since then. From the 1970s it has been restored. 

Click here to read post My Family is a part of “A Genealogical History of the Jews of Pinczow (Poland) in the 18th & 19th Centuries” by Heshel Teitelbaum

Click here to read about the World Monuments Fund bringing back the great Pińczów Synagogue

Click here to see Photographs of Pinczow Gallery

Rabbi Eliezer Finkler Of Penczow and Sosnowiec

Penczow before the war

Nowa Synagogue in Penczow built in 1682

Penczow,  The Lajbusio  Mill 

Penczow  Cemtery Before 1939

Penczow  Cemtery Before 1939

Penczow Before 1939  – The Jews of Penczow

Photographs have come from all of the following sources:
Pinczow.com

Ella Burakowski from the book Hidden Gold: A True Story of the Holocaust

Other photographs have been collected by Bruce Baumwoll from the internet.