Nowy Sacz, Poland: Punishment Books, 1940-1942

Introduction

This database is an index of 1,883 Jews who received punishments, in the form of fines or imprisonment, for various alleged offences in the town of Nowy Sacz, between January 1940 and September 1942.

German forces occupied Nowy Sacz in September 1939. The Judenrat was set up in the spring of 1940, and the first mass executions took place around the same time. The ghetto was set up in June 1941 and at one time held some 18,000 Jews from the town and surrounding region. In late August 1942, the ghetto was liquidated and some 15,000 Jews deported to the Belzec extermination camp.

Source

The database is an index of two books of punishments, compiled by the municipal authorities in Nazi-occupied Nowy Sacz, detailing punishments for a range of alleged offences - some utterly trivial - imposed on the whole population (Jewish and non-Jewish) of the town. The books are held in the Nowy Sacz state archive, in their Fond 15, which contains municipal records from 1919 to 1945.

The books are:

• - Fond 15, File 340. This book, in German, starts in January 1940 and continues to 30 June 1943. It contains 1,012 pages, with about 5,560 records. The last 800 records in the book were all from the same day in 1943, and relate to an identical “offence” (that of illegal vaccinations) and an identical fine (of 20 zloty).
• Fond 15, File 341. This book, in Polish, overlaps the time period of the first book and continues to December 1944. About 1,500 people are listed in the book, in some 200 double pages.

While most offences are described in words (for example “snow not removed from pavement/sidewalk”), several of the descriptions refer only to an Article number in the Polish Criminal Code of 1932. Where possible, the spreadsheet includes a brief description of the Article from the code.

Only Jewish names have been extracted from these two books. There are no Jewish names recorded after early September 1942.

The fields in the database are:

• Page scans number
• Fond/file number [15/340 and 341]]
• Page number
• Record number
• Given name(s)
• Surname
• Date of birth
• Age (years)
• Place of birth
• Mother’s given name(s)
• Father’s given name(s)
• Son’s given name(s)
• Daughter’s given name(s)
• Town
• House number or street address (in three columns, as people could be recorded at different addresses for different offences they were punished for)
• Offence (Polish/German)
• Offence (English)
• Date of punishment
• Fine imposed
• Prison sentence imposed (as an alternative to a fine)
• Comments
• Note: Not all the fields are necessarily present in any given entry.

Acknowledgments

With the assistance of a grant from JewishGen.org, Gesher Galicia worked during 2018 on obtaining copies of the records, and indexing and checking them. The indexes were inserted into an Excel spreadsheet.

Michal Majewski, Board Member of Gesher Galicia, coordinated this project, and the following people partcicipated in photographing records, indexing, and checking the spreadsheets: Klaus Dünser, Piotr Gumola, Tony Kahane, Katarzyna Marczuk, Maria Molenda, Maciej Walasek, Maciej Wzorek, and Róza Zabojszcz.

Special thanks to Avraham Groll, and Warren Blatt for their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy.  Particular thanks to Nolan Altman, Vice President of Data Acquisition and Coordinator of JewishGen’s Holocaust Database files.

Nolan Altman
Coordinator - JewishGen's Holocaust Database
April 2019

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database and JewishGen's All Poland Database.