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This project seeks to collect all Jewish families from the town of Kazimierz (Casimir), Poland.
Kazimierz Memorial Book on Jewishgen
Background
Kazimierz (Polish pronunciation: [ka%CB%88%CA%91im%CA%B2%C9%9B%CA%82]; Latin: Casimiria; Yiddish: קוזמיר) is a historical district of Kraków and Kraków Old Town, Poland. Since its inception in the fourteenth century to the early nineteenth century, Kazimierz was an independent city, a royal city of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom, located south of Kraków Old Town and separated by a branch of the Vistula river.
Christian and Jewish cultures co-existed together for many centuries its north-eastern part of the district was historic Jewish, whose Jewish inhabitants were forcibly relocated in 1941 by the German occupying forces into the Krakow ghetto just across the river in Podgórze . Today Kazimierz is one of the major tourist attractions of Krakow and an important center of cultural life of the city.
- The boundaries of Kazimierz are defined by an old island in the Vistula river. The northern branch of the river (Stara Wisła – Old Vistula) was filled-in at the end of the 19th century during the partitions of Poland and made into an extension of ul. Stradomska Street connecting Kazimierz district with Kraków Old Town.
- Three early medieval settlements are known to have existed on the island defining Kazimierz.
- There was also a much smaller island upstream of Kazimierz known as the “Tatar Island” after the Tatar cemetery there. This smaller island has since washed away.
- On 27 March 1335, King Casimir III of Poland (Kazimierz Wielki) declared the two western suburbs of Kraków to be a new town named after him, Kazimierz (Casimiria in Latin).
The bridge across the Vistula
Perhaps the most important feature of medieval Kazimierz was the Pons Regalis, the only major, permanent bridge across the Vistula (Polish: Wisła) for several centuries. This bridge connected Kraków via Kazimierz to the Wieliczka Salt Mine and the lucrative Hungarian trade route. The last bridge at this location (at the end of modern Stradomska Street) was dismantled in 1880 when the filling-in of the Old Vistula river bed under Mayor Mikołaj Zyblikiewicz made it obsolete.
Jewish Kazimierz
Jews had played an important role in the Kraków regional economy since the end of the 13th century, granted the freedom of worship, trade and travel by Bolesław the Pious in his General Charter of Jewish Liberties issued already in 1264.
- The Jewish community in Kraków had lived undisturbed alongside their Christian neighbours under the protective King Kazimierz III, the last king of the Piast dynasty.
- The oldest synagogue building standing in Poland was built in Kazimierz at around that time, either in 1407 or 1492 (the date varies with several sources). It is an Orthodox fortress synagogue called the Old Synagogue. In 1494 a disastrous fire destroyed a large part of Kraków.
- In 1495 the Polish king Jan I Olbracht transferred the Jews from the ravaged Old Town to the Bawół district of Kazimierz.
- Jewish City, which represented only about one fifth of the geographical area of Kazimierz, but nearly half of its inhabitants. The Oppidum became the main spiritual and cultural centre of Polish Jewry, hosting many of Poland’s finest Jewish scholars, artists and craftsmen. Among its famous inhabitants were the Talmudist Moses Isserles, the Kabbalist Natan Szpiro, and the royal physician Shmuel bar Meshulam
The golden age of the Oppidum came to an end in 1782, when the Austrian Emperor Joseph II disbanded the kahal. In 1822, the walls were torn down, removing any physical reminder of the old borders between Jewish and Christian Kazimierz.
- In 1791, Kazimierz lost its status as a separate city and became a district of Kraków.
- The richer Jewish families quickly moved out of the overcrowded streets of eastern Kazimierz.
- Because of the injunction against travel on the Sabbath, however, most Jewish families stayed relatively close to the historic synagogues in the old Oppidum, maintaining Kazimierz’s reputation as a “Jewish district” long after the concept ceased to have any administrative meaning.
- By the 1930s, Kraków had 120 officially registered synagogues and prayer houses scattered across the city and much of Jewish intellectual life had moved to new centres like Podgórze.
During the second World War
The Jews of Krakow, including those in Kazimierz, were forced by the Nazis into a crowded ghetto in Podgórze, across the river. Most of them were later killed during the liquidation of the ghetto or in death camps.
Further information: Kraków Ghetto, Operation Reinhard in Kraków and Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
Post-War Jewish Kazimierz
Ariel Jewish restaurant, Szeroka Street, Kazimierz 2009
After the Second World War, devoid of Jews, Kazimierz was neglected by the communist authorities. However, since 1988, now a popular annual Jewish Cultural Festival has drawn Cracovians back to the heart of the Oppidum and re-introduced Jewish culture to a generation of Poles who have grown up without Poland’s historic Jewish community.
In 1993, Steven Spielberg shot his film Schindler's List largely in Kazimierz (in spite of the fact that very little of the action historically took place there) and this drew international attention to Kazimierz.
- Since 1993, there have been parallel developments in the restoration of important historic sites in Kazimierz and a booming growth in Jewish-themed restaurants, bars, bookstores and souvenir shops.
- Jews returning to Kazimierz from Israel and America. Kazimierz with Krakow, is having a small growth in Jewish population recently.
- A Jewish youth group now meets weekly in Kazimierz and the Remuh Synagogue actively serves a small congregation of mostly elderly Cracovian Jews.
Each year at the end of June, the Jewish Culture Festival takes place in Kazimierz. It is Europe's largest Jewish festival of culture and music and attracts visitors from around the world. Music at the festival is very diverse and played by bands from the Middle East, USA and Africa, amongst others.
