This is a translation from: Pinkas Hakehillot Polin:
Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, Poland, Volume IV, pages 156-159, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

[Pages 156-159]

* Data for 1939 not included in the original text.

A Jewish community existed in Gostynin since the mid-15th century. The first Jews made a living from trade and agriculture on leased lands. As their numbers increased, they also entered the crafts, mostly as tailors and furriers, which at the time were typical occupations of Jews. A wooden synagogue was built in 1710, and by 1765 there were 157 Jewish residents in the town. Between 1823 and 1862, the Jews were confined to a special neighborhood. During the second half of the 19th century most of them continued to work as petty traders and craftsmen. A few

were better established merchants who traded in timber, grains, and wool. A sawmill and a couple of factories that produced socks and prayer shawls were owned by Jews. Some Jewish contractors supplied building materials and other staples to the units of the Russian army that were stationed in the area. A significant part of the Jewish residents of Gostynin were employed in construction, building barracks for the Russian army as masons, stone cutters, tinsmiths, carpenters, plastermakers and glaziers. The relations between Jews and non-Jews were good at the time. The Jewish community provided welfare assistance to needy Jews and also to Polish families. The Jewish doctor Stanislaw-Shmuel Markusfeld, who worked between 1844 and 1849 in Gostynin's government hospital, took care of the poor sick people, paying for the cost of medicines from his own pocket.

The first signs of Jewish involvement in Gostynin's social and public life came with the Polish Uprising of 1863, when some Jewish residents supported and helped the rebellion. One of them was Frieda Motyl, known as “Czarny Motyl” (Black Butterfly), who sheltered several rebels in her house during the worst of the Czarist repression.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the community of Gostynin maintained its traditional religious profile. But there were many manual workers in the town, and conditions were favorable for the rise of Polish and Jewish labor movements. While a few Jewish workers and craftsmen joined the first circles of Polish social-democrats, many more participated in the Jewish leftist parties Bund and Poalei Zion. Jewish youngsters established a Popular Library, which served as a meeting place for cultural events in those early years of the 20th century.

The revolutionary events of 1905 and 1906 left their mark in Gostynin as well. There were marches and demonstrations with participation of Poles and Jews. During the reactionary period that followed there were attacks on the Jews, prompting youngsters to organize a defense unit to protect Jewish lives and property.

As stated above, there already was an organized Jewish kehila in Gostynin during the first half of the 19th century. Among the rabbis of that period, there are mentions of Rabbi Shlomo of Gostynin, who moved to Sieradz. More is known about Rabbi Yechiel Mayer Lifschitz, a student of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk. Rabbi Lifschitz, who was popularly known as Baal Tehilim (The Psalmist), served the community of Gostynin for forty years. During his later years he was recognized by the Hassidim throughout Poland as “The Good Rabbi of Gostynin”. After his death in 1888 he was immortalized as the hero of Scholem Asch's novel “The Psalmist Jew”. His successor in Gostynin was Rabbi Yohav Yehoshua, known as “The lift from Kinsk”. He established a Yeshiva for students from Gostynin and the surrounding region. The Yeshiva was eventually closed when Rabbi Yohav Yehoshua was appointed as rabbi of Kinsk, his native town.

In 1895 Chaim Meshulam Kaufman (Letterman) became the new rabbi of Gostynin. He served for about thirteen years before moving to Pultusk in 1907. Another Gostynin rabbi was David Solman, a national leader of the Zionist religious Mizrahi party in Poland. He was appointed in the years before the First World War and passed away in 1921. The last rabbi of Gostynin, Yitzhak Meir Borenstein, who was also a Mizrahi party activist, perished in the years of the Holocaust. Shmuel Wolf Pinczewski served as coordinator of the kehila for many years.

Until the First World War, most of the children studied in traditional chedarim. The early years of the 20th century were marked by the introduction of some “reformed chedarim”, which incorporated more modern pedagogic methods. A private Hebrew school called Torah and Religion was established in the town just before the war. The students learned Hebrew, Torah, and general subjects. During the years of the First World War, officers of the Russian army accused the Jews of spying and helping the Germans. The rabbi and several leaders of the community were arrested, but they were eventually released following the appeals of local residents and a member of the nobility. Germany's occupation of the area did not improve things for the Jews because they were subject to heavy taxation and confiscation of their property. As many sunk into poverty, the numbers of the needy increased due to the influx of impoverished refugees arriving from the surrounding towns and villages. A group of Jews was arrested and sent to the forced labor camps of Schneidemiel and Appelberg in Germany.

Under the German occupation, an electricity supply station was established in 1915 and the railway line to the town was completed in 1923. The town's residents were permitted to organize their own social and political institutions. A Jewish committee was established to assist the needy members of the community. About 400 people received warm meals and financial help. The Linat Tzedek society was established in 1915 to provide medical services for the poor. Local branches of Jewish political parties were also established and Zionist activists were allowed to be openly active. The HaThiya organization was established with three circles of activists: Herzliya, Maccabi (sports), and the drama group Habima.

The restoration of Polish independence in 1928 did not improve the situation of the Jewish community. Units of general Haller arrived to Gostynin and began to abuse the Jews, cutting off the bears and sidelocks of the Jews on the streets. By 1921, there were less Jews living in Gostynin than in 1897. Many had emigrated before and during the First World War, and others continued to leave the country as a result of the insecurity and unsettled economic conditions that prevailed after the war.

Most Jews in Gostynin continued to work as traders and craftsmen. There were no industrialists or big merchants in the town. The vast majority barely made a living. It was a time of consolidation for the network of mutual aid organizations and communal institutions that would play a central role providing welfare and economic assistance to the Jews during the interwar period.

The craftsmen organized themselves into a Unified Guild that included sections of needleworkers, taylors and seamstresses, hairdressers, transport workers, and others. In the 1920s, with help from the American JOINT, the cooperative Gemilot Hasadim and the People's Bank were established to provide loans to small merchants and craftsmen. As stated above, there were Zionist circles in Gostynin since the early 20th century. During the interwar period, the Polish Zionist Federation was represented in the town by several parties including the General Zionists, Poalei Zion, Mizrahi, and the Revisionists. There was also a group of Hejalutz and an agricultural center that, on the eve of the Second World War, trained groups of young Zionist pioneers on a permanent basis. The non-Zionist parties active in Gostynin were Agudat Israel and the Bund (which had its own organizations for youngsters and children). Since the traditional Orthodox Jews maintained their hegemony in Gostynin, the political influence of Agudat Israel was great. In the 1930s, however, the influence of the Bund and the Zionist parties was on the rise.

In the 1934 ballot for the Gostynin municipal council, four Jewish representatives were elected, as follows: Zionists 1, Agudat Israel 1, coalition Bund-Polish Socialists 1. The results of the 1936 elections for the 8-seat board of the kehila were: General Zionists 2, Poalei Zion 1, Agudat Israel 2, Poalei Agudat Israel 1, Bund 2.

During this period the children continued to study in the traditional chedarim. A few boys attended the private school and the girls the Beit Yakov school. The number of Jewish teenagers, boys and girls, who attended Gostynin's two Polish secondary schools was small.

The library that had been founded before the First World War continued to operate with hundreds of books in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish. Beit Hatarbut, which was founded by the Craftsmen's Union, offered a variety of activities, including lectures and cultural meetings, Yiddish literary and theater groups, and evening courses for working youngsters that were taught by the older Jewish students of the secondary school. Other cultural activities were organized by the Bund, which also ran the sports club Morgenstern.

Gostynin was occupied by units of the German army in the early days of the war. The persecutions started immediately. On Yom Kippur day of 1939 the Germans concentrated the Jews on the market square, herded them to the local church, and locked them up for three days. After that, they set fire to the synagogue and forced the Jews to demolish the wooden building of the Beit Hamidrash. The situation worsened on a daily basis. The Jews were drafted for forced labor, ordered to wear yellow stars on their clothes, banned from the sidewalks and compelled to walk on the streets.

On November 27 1939 four leaders of the Jewish kehila were shot along with 24 Polish notables. The Germans confiscated merchandise and valuables from Jewish stores and homes and imposed steep cash contributions and fines on the community. When, after several rounds of forced collections, the leaders of the community conveyed to the Germans that it was impossible to get more money, they were told that they should seek help among the Gostynin Jews living in Warsaw. A delegation of the kehila went to Warsaw and managed to get the 5000 marks to pay the fine. The restrictions on the Jews increased when the region was included in the Wartheland province, which had been formally annexed as an integral part of the Third Reich. In 1940 the Jews of Gostynin were ordered to evacuate their homes and concentrate on a designated area that included several streets adjacent to the river Skrwa. The ghetto was initially open. Jewish craftsmen could continue to work for their Polish clients and people could move around to buy food from the peasants. In the summer of 1940 there were 2250 Jews in Gostynin, including about 650 refugees who had come from neighboring villages. Men and women were drafted to do a variety of jobs for the German army and for German companies that had established plants in the area. They were transported in the morning and brought back in the evening. Children aged ten and over were also drafted for work. In the summer of 1941 the Germans fenced the ghetto with barbed wire and declared it closed. The Judenrat members were ordered to procure food for the ghetto and distribute it among the families, and a Jewish police corps was made responsible for keeping people locked inside the ghetto. At the same time, groups of Gostynin Jews began to be systematically sent to forced labor camps. In August 1941, a group of youngsters were sent to a camp in Janikow. Eventually, the people left in the ghetto were the elderly, mothers with children, and sick people. On April 16-17 1942 the Germans liquidated the ghetto, sending the remnant of the Gostynin Jewish community to the extermination camp at Chelmno. After the deportation, the town's Jewish cemetery was destroyed and leveled to the ground by the Germans.

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Updated 19 Sep 2020 by LA