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Dedicated to the memory of 150 years of a Jewish community of Ger (Góra Kalwaria) and the 3500 members of this community that were brutally annihilated by the Nazis and their local collaborators in the Holocaust, in WW2.
A sub-Project of Jewish Communities of Mozavia District, Poland
Photo: Jewish Cemetery of Góra Kalwaria, Poland (1923)
This project seeks to collect all of the Jewish families from the town of Góra Kalwaria [Gur, Ger], Poland. Please feel free to add public profiles of any one time Jewish residents of Góra Kalwaria, Poland.
Góra Kalwaria [%CB%88gura kalˈvarʲa] is a town on the Vistula River in the Mazovian Voivodship, Poland, about 25 kilometres southeast of Warsaw. The town has significance for both Catholic Christians and Hasidic Jews. Originally, its name was simply Góra (literally: "Mountain"), changed in 1670 to Nowa Jerozolima ("New Jerusalem"), and in the 18th century to Góra Kalwaria ("Calvary Mountain"). The Yiddish name of the town is גער (Ger).
The village of Góra already existed in the 13th century. Pt was completely destroyed during a Swedish occupation known as the Deluge, in 1666, it became the property of the Bishop of Poznań, who decided to found a new town on the ruins, as a religious Catholic centre. Jews were not allowed to settle there.
In the early 19th century, the ban on Jewish settlement was lifted and Jews shortly became the predominant group in the town. Between 1852 to 1939 the Jewish population tripled from 1161 (50% of the population) to ca 3600 (ca 52%). Góra Kalwaria then became one of the major centers of Hasidic Judaism and home to the Ger dynasty.
When the Germans invaded Góra Kalwaria in 1939, they immediately targetted the Jewish population. German mayor Ewald Jauke banned Jews from engaging in trade, crafts, and pigeon breeding. Jews were also forbidden from interacting with the local population or even listening the radio. A contingent of 100 men were gathered in front of the town hall every day to serve as forced labour. Many of them, mostly young, fled to the surrounding villages or were in hiding in fallow lands near the Vistula river.
In the spring of 1940, some 400 Jews from Lodz, Pabianice, Aleksandrów, Sierpc, Włocławek and Kalisz were transported to Góra Kalwaria. In June 1940, a ghetto was established in the area of the former Jewish quarter. In total, some 3,500 Jews lived in the ghetto, which had its own Jewish police.
The ghetto was liquidated on 25 and 26 February 1941. About 3,000 Jews were transported to the Warsaw Ghetto, and were deported to Treblinka Extermination Camp in the summer of 1942. Several hundred Jews were executed during the liquidation of the ghetto.Only 35 of the ca. 3500 Góra ghetto Jews survived the war. The Jewish community was not reconstituted after the war.