We are pupils of Public Middle School in Przytyk. Getting to know the culture of Jews from Przytyk, their relations with other citizens of our town (and region) is our aim which united us. Our group includes only girls who are eagerly realizing this project.
Let’s do it!
Why we do this project
We have taken up realizing this project because we live in a town which history has a deep link with the history of Jews. We want to deepen our knowledge of multicultural history of our region, we want to analyze correlations of Jews with other inhabitants. Showing Jews as neighbors of our ancestors, linked with friendship as well as with hatred to our generation is our main motivation. We intend to make the Judaic rich heritage to our society. We focus especially on Jewish necropolis.
Jewish community in our town
Between Great War and World War II (2) majority of local society consisted of Jews. The beginning of their settlement is dated on 17th century and they were powerful social group. In the second part of 19th century Jews of Przytyk were occupied with trade. One of problems in local society’s life was great variety of nations and faith. In 1921, Jews constituted 81% of whole population. They worked mainly as merchants and craftsmen to earn for living. Among the Jewish society of Przytyk there was small group of the intelligentsia. This group included rabbi, teacher, two doctors and a butcher who was doing his job according to kosher rules. Rabbi was a person who worked among the society organizing numerous philanthropic actions. He was the mediator, even the judge in the arguments of families and neighbors. As a mentor, he was advising in different spheres of life. A function of Jewish butcher enabled to conduct high-standard life. The butcher earned 4,300 zł in 1931. Whereas the salary of rabbi was 6,300 zl per year.In the period of prosperity, one of four of Jews belonged to the indigent, while 20 % of Jews constituted the group of poor.
In ten years time the indigent counted 66% and the poor – 33% of whole society of Przytyk. The pauperization of Jewish community in the period of economical crisis and the depression after it was very visible. In late 30’s of 20th century there were no rich Jews in Przytyk.The source of happiness and relief for Jews was their religion. The majority of Jewish in Przytyk was very pious. In the town there were several places of prayer including the synagogue and Bet Hamidrash (the house of learning/preaching and prayer) where elder Jews were studying Torah.
What we do in the project
Przytyk is small settlement, which history is closely related to the one of Jewish society,situated nearby Radom. To save this history we are planning to take care of local Jewish graveyard, search information about Jews of Przytyk, their life and culture. Our project is entitled “Tracing Jews of Przytyk”. We are going to search information via Internet, by reading books connected with this topic and mainly by interviewing people who still remember times of World War 2. We will take care of Jewish necropolis and make photographic documentary.
What we are going to do next
After preparing plan of working, we started searching any available documents abort Jewish society in Przytyk. The most vital source of information turned out to be the series of articles published in local bulletin “Region of Przytyk” organized by Stefan Błaszczyk under one title “Jews in Przytyk” and published books related to the topic. Thanks to that we can organize our knowledge easily.Beside, we collected many useful information while interviewing our grandparents – we are going to prepare album “The History of Memory”.
During autumn we took photos of matzevot published on our website.In March we are going to clean up the graveyard, we hope to renovate (repaint) part of the fence of it. Simultaneously we will prepare the documentation of that place.
In April we will work on Jewish culture and bring back the memory of it to the society of different faith.
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