Send Gift Baskets to Zgierz, Poland

The city of Zgierz is one of the oldest in central Poland. The oldest known mention of Zgierz dates back to 1231, when two dukes of fragmented Piast-ruled Poland, Władysław Odonic of Greater Poland and Konrad I of Masovia, held a meeting there. Before 1288, Zgierz acquired its town rights, which were renewed in 1420 by Polish King Wadyslaw II Jagieo. A 10-year exemption from taxes was granted to the town by King John I Albert in 1494, and three annual fairs were established by King Alexander Jagiellon in 1504. As part of the Polish Crown’s Greater Poland Province, Zgierz was an administrative town in the Volcia Voivodeship in the Polish Royal Province.

Germany raided Zgierz on September 3 and 5, 1939, as part of the German-Soviet invasion of Poland that started World War II. In September 1939, the Germans executed Polish civilian defenders and committed their first atrocities against Poles. Zgierz residents were also among those murdered in nearby Agiewniki on September 12 and Retki on September 16. The Intelligenzaktion involved the mass slaughter of Poles from the region in nearby forests of Agiewniki and Lumierz, killing hundreds and thousands of people. Expulsions of Poles and deportations of over 8,000 people to Germany for forced labor were also carried out by the Germans. Also, the interwar director of the local State School of Economics, Jakub Stefan Cezak, and the local Protestant parish priest, Aleksander Falzman, were killed in Nazi concentration camps. There were closures of schools, lootings of factories, and the destruction of Polish monuments. Despite this, Zgierz was home to the Polish underground resistance movement.

Before the war, Zgierz had a thriving Jewish population of around 4,000, constituting 16,6% of the town’s population. With the assistance of local ethnic Germans, the Germans began persecuting the Jews when they occupied the city. In addition to burning the synagogue, Jews were kidnapped from the streets and forced into forced labor. Some of those who fled returned, though many tried to run the town. In December 1939, the Germans deported 2500 Jews to Gowno in the General Government, a German-occupied area in central Poland. There were fewer than 100 Jews left behind. Mostly artisans were thought to be helpful to the Germans. These Jews were deported to the ód Ghetto in 1942. A unique feature of this history is that no mass killings were reported in Zgierz. Of course, the Jews deported to Łódz, and Głowno were caught up in the fate of those communities, and most were later deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. As many as 350 Jewish residents of Zgierz survived the war but did not return to the town.