Saturday, February 16, 2013

Sędziszów Małopolski

Liechtenstern Map of the Two Galicias 1804



Short history from the Wikipedia article:
In the 1930s, Sędziszów Małopolski became one of centers of the Central Industrial Region, and in 1937, a new factoryZakłady Przemysłowe Sędziszów Małopolski was opened. On September 8, 1939, the town was captured by the Wehrmacht. The Germans opened here a ghetto, in which in mid-1942 there were 1,500 local Jews. In July 1942, the Germans murdered 280 Jews at the ghetto, and the remaining population was transported to Belzec extermination camp, where they perished. Sędziszów Małopolski was an important center of the Home Army, whose units participated in Operation Tempest. The town was captured by the Soviets on August 4, 1944.

A translation by Google of a history from the town's website, http://www.sedziszow-mlp.pl/pl/0,24/24/:

A separate chapter in the history of the Jews of the city enrolled. Accounted for a significant proportion of the population - at the beginning of the twentieth century. There were over 53%. Lived in the very center of the city, the Market Square and the streets: A wide, Potter's, Short, Wyspiańskiego, May 3 to the bridge over Budziszu, Railway, Bakers. In the place where today stands the hospital, they had their temples and synagogues. Despite the distinct religious, linguistic, cultural, a commitment to the community with the Poles.When, in 1930. Census took place, the question of nationality replied: "Pole, the religion of Moses". Their world, for centuries alongside our existing Nazis in a few years razed. The final act of the tragedy of the Jews sędziszowskich played on July 24, 1942. Here's how recounts these events eyewitness: "... they set them before the town hall groups: one group they were men to 35 years, the other for over 35 years, a separate group of women. weak and sick loaded onto carts and they sent the streets: Short and Silent - there was a gate to the Jewish cemetery. A day earlier, dug a huge down at 200 - 300 people. There's one behind the other wagon drove up and they went like lambs to the slaughter. They saw everything, what happens to their predecessors. Brano such a "delinquent", bends his head, shot in the neck and thrown into the pit. Then the next batch of the same thing was happening, until all that dressed the. "In this way, killed about 280 people. Other Nazis sent by train to Belzec, where they were murdered. Thanks to the generosity of inhabitants Sędziszowa life saved approx. 30 Jewish people, with more than 1,000 living here before the war. 
August 4, 1944 r. to the Red Army entered the city. The retreating Germans blew up railway bridges, building stations, and other objects of strategic importance. During the occupation, damage has been approx. 70% of the buildings, including City Hall, the parish church, school, post office, theater room, a vicarage. Claimed the lives of 21 residents of Polish nationality, 9 died in prisons and camps, 10 were killed during the fighting in August 1944.

The Jewish cemetery is located in the southern part of the city. The entrance gate is situated at the crossroads of Szkarpowej and Kosciuszko. Sorry, did not survive the gravestones, which the Nazis used to cure the streets and squares. In the southern part of the cemetery are two stone monuments with inscriptions in Hebrew. There was also a mass grave residents Sędziszowa, Ropczyc and Wielopole Jewish, murdered 24 July 1942 year.


Gersher Galicia has a page for the town: http://www.geshergalicia.org/towns/sedziszow-malopolski/



Stanley Kreinik sent a video which was a copy of a film that was taken in Sędziszów Małopolski on January 14, 1935, by Sidney Herbst. There are clips posted at http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/search.aspx?query=Sedziszow.

JewishGen Kahilalinks has a webpage for Sedziszów Malopolski:
http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Kolbuszowa/Sedziszow/Sedziszow1.html Susana Leistner Bloch created the webpage as part of the Kolbuszowa Region research Group.

JewishGen Locality Page: http://data.jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.dll?jg~jgsys~community~-527471

[ David J, Paul Tyson and Andrew Kreinik started a discussion of what happened to the pieces of gravestones that were used to pave the court in front of the Town Hall. They are probably crushed and not recoverable.]

Sidney Herbst is credited as the filmmaker of the video below. [Note: I talked to Noel Herbst in 2013. He found his father's film in the basement and made it available. Thanks, Noel.]
About the Herbst name: Tante Feige Herbst was married to Marcus Herbst, so I bet that these are the same families. Several Herbsts were guests at my great-grandparents, S Josef Kreinik and Fannie Krantz Kreinik's 50th wedding anniversary. "Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Herbst, Mr. Joel Herbst, Mr. Pincus Herbst,..."

One sequence in the film is labeled "Kreinick Family Residence" and there is a shot of a building and this family standing in front. Can we identify these people?
Andrew thinks the woman is Frimet:
The child might have been born around 1930 or '31.
There is an index of people registered in Sedziszow at the USHMM. Link and Here.
There is a description of the film project below.
=================
Kreiniks who might be in this frame.
Adults left to right: Majer, Frimet, Tuyve, Herschel.
Children:

The woman does not look old enough to be Fremet. The two young boys could be Jack Gleicher and Marcus Kreinik. Stanley Kreinik says, "Herschel Kreinik was my fathers' brother and Tuyva's son -- not Solomon. The picture is Tuyva and Frimet and Herschal Standing behind his parents, and I think Meyer Kreinig, from France. Both he and my father (Walter) were visiting their home town in 1936[5] when this picture was taken."


Here is a copy of the video on YouTube. The cover shot is of the Kreiniks. 

Here is a formal portrait of Tuyve and his family. Thanks to Stanley Kreinik for the image.


Mirel KREINIKFrimet NEPPEL FEILERMajer KreinigShmiel KreinikTuyve Tobias KreinikPinia Pinya KREINIK

From the Sędziszów Małopolski website: "As with other cities, accurate data on Kawęczynie provides census of 1933, the village was then 142 buildings, of which only one was a brick. 102 houses had only one room, 122 hid thatch, in 105 there was no floor. Population was 864 people."

Stanley Kreinik visited Sędziszów in 2004, and reported that there was still no running water. Maybe the pump you see in the film was still in use.

More Photos from JewishGen. YIVO link: http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/search.aspx?query=Sedziszow

I am pretty sure that Sędziszów we are talking about is Sędziszów Małopolski, because it is only 16-18 kilometers from Zgłobień where my grandmother Leah Kreinik Jacobowitz was born:

View Larger Map
Zgłobień is only a few kilometers from Rzeszow:
"The city of Rzeszow, known to its Jewish population as "Reishe".
My grandmother also refers to it that way in her memoir:
"We went to the big town at intervals by horse and wagon to sell our dairy produce – a big city called Rzeszow, which, in the way of Jewish folk with all names, they pronounced “Reishe.” 

[There is a description of Rzeszow at the Holocaust Ghettos Research Project Rzezsow. On that page we read, "By June 1940, the number of Jews in Rzeszow had decreased to 11,800, of whom 7,800 were pre-war residents of the city. At the same time, the number of Jews in the towns and villages of the Rzeszow region were (with the number of refugees in brackets):

Blazowa – 931 (139), Czudec 428 (33), Glogow M. – 806 (87), Kolbuszowa – 1,427 (700), Lancut – 900 (502), Niebylec – 570 (20), Ranizow – 620 (63), Sedziszow – 110 (81), Sokolow M. – 1,700 (186), Strzyzow – 1,238 (174), Tyczyn – 500 (140), Zolynia – 700 (103), Lezajsk – (500)."]


So Sedziszow Malapolski is near enough to Rzeszow to conveniently bring their Jews, for Leah to visit from Zgłobień when Uncle Aaron married Tante Gittel in 1899, and for Leah to go to Reishe on market day and to see the Good Kaiser Franz Josef once when he passed through.



WWII Monument
Recent: Stanley Kreinik visited in 2004.


The Jewish Cemetery in 2004:
(Stanley Kreinik visited in 2004. The cemetery is not well-maintained.)
This is Pani Plata's daughter Malina with Stanley. I asked Andrew [Aug 27, 2013] if it was Pani Plata herself: "No.  That is probably her daughter.  When I met her, she had bright red hair so I don't recognize the grey.  When I met with Pani Plata-Urbanska, her daughter sat in the room quietly as her mother told stories and sobbed.  When she was a baby, her mother was caught in German crossfire while carrying her and while holding her, her mother had to crawl to safety before finding a chance to get home.
Pani Plata-Urbanska and her daughter were the few remaining natives of Sedziszow by war's end.  80% of the population had been deported or killed during the war.  The Russians deported Poles from eastern Poland to towns like Sedziszow to repopulate them and to remove Poles from the eastern frontier so that the Soviets could annex it."

This is what Google Maps shows as a satellite image of the Jewish Cemetery (Cmentarz_Żydowski) today:

View Larger Map


For Stanley Kreinik's materials and more about the Jewish Cemetery, look at this LINK.
TODAY
Look at the building in the Herbst video (above) at 1:30 and compare it with this image from the cam of the Market.

From the Sedziszow Web Site, http://www.sedziszow-mlp.pl/pl/0,25/25/
"The Town Hall was built in the seventeenth century, in the nineteenth century, it was rebuilt. It is a building storeys, cellar, built on a rectangular plan. It is located in the middle of a large, rectangular market. The front facade is distinctive, northern, dominated by the tower, separated from the walls of the building two pilaster strips.Above the entrance bears the coat of arms of the city - Odrowąż above - two Gothic arched windows, covered arcade (the effect of the reconstruction of the nineteenth century).The upper part of the tower has a square shape with bevelled corners. Is covered with a high, pitched roof with dormers, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, while the body of the building is hidden roof. The interior layout is trójtraktowy. In the basement and on the ground floor have been preserved barrel vaults. There is reason to believe that the Town Hall is a multi-level basement and connect with others, which are under houses, standing in the market."
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:POL_S%C4%99dzisz%C3%B3w_Ma%C5%82opolski_-_Town_Hall.JPG

Thanks to Ida Friedlander, Marcus Kreinik's daughter, for the images below.

Post Card
Church
Modern Road Sign
 Downtown
Rail Station
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The 1929 business directory shows a T Kreinik under Krasecy (tailleurs) near the bottom of the page http://data.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/1929/loadtop.htm?0458




6 comments:

  1. Andrew Kreinik, Feb 16, 2013: "David,

    Thanks for this email.

    I know that Stanley has a longer video because I have seen it at his house. Perhaps, he would be willing to palce it in the archives so that all can see it.

    The picture on your blog of the Kreinik family are undoubtedly Kreiniks the family resemblance to my grandfather of the two men on the right is strong. The woman in the photo may be my great grandmother Frimet.

    About the town square. You'll not in the pictures from 1935, it is unpaved. In fact one of my cousins Jean Chall, described to me that it was always muddy. According to Pani Plata Urbanska who I met in 1975 in Sediszow and testified to me about the fate of the Kreinik family, the town square was paved during WWII by taking the gravestones from the Jewish cemetery and laying them in the townsquare. The Jewish cemetery stilll exists but in place of gravestones, there are two large mounds. These were the sites of the mass graves of the Jews executed in Sediszow in 1942. Pani Plata described in grisly detail about the executions and the mass graves. It is a description that I will never forget and have not shared with many people because it is very difficult to find the words without feeling the pain. Pani Plata cried while she descibed the events and stopped several times stating that she couldn't go on...then she would take a deep breath and tell me that she needed to tell me so that I would know.

    Pani Plata as a Catholic Pole survived but she told me about her own survival and how she had to crawl with her baby to avoid the Nazis.

    I corresponded with her for a few years, in German, but have lost touch though I did correspond briefly with her daughter who was with us at the time Pani Plata testified to me. Matt Yospin and Stanley Kreinik have met the daughter when they visited Sediszow.

    Andrew"

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  2. More from Andrew Kreinik. These all can be reframed and posted on another place for posterity

    "Yes, David, feel free to post the email.

    I looked at the video and when you see the long shot of the Kreinik family, you can see the Plata house to the left. It was a distinctive house because it is made of brick with stone trimmed windows. I believe that at one time Pani Plata's father was the mayor. so the house is a bit fancier than the rest. The Kreinik house was destroyed either during World War II or just after it. When I was there, the site housed a restaurant. Pani Plata took me to her backyard and told me that her garden was unchanged since the Kreiniks were neighbors so that I was looking at what they also saw.

    During World War I, the Kreinik house had been turned into a stable for Russian horses. The family had fled to Prague during the war and found in bad repair when they returned.

    The economics of Sedsiszow changed dramatically after World War I because it was no longer part of an Empire and travel to Germany, Austria and Hungary were much more restricted. My great-grandfather could no longer travel to Berlin, Vienna and Budapest where he bought old clothes from nobility and sent them back to Sedsiszow where his wife (Frimet) and my grandfather, as a child, repaired the clothes for resale. Pani Plata told me that she remembered that the shop had beautiful things. After the WWI, the Kreiniks in Sedsiszow faced financial ruin and were dependent on remittances from America.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Is it possible that the men in the "Kreinick Family Residence" photo are Chaim Kreinik's sons?
    http://www.geni.com/people/Chaim-Kreinik/6000000010841676300
    Chaim's Birth: estimated between 1844 and 1896 Sędziszów, Poland.
    Father of Manny Kreinik; Morris Kreinik; Marcus Kreinik; Joseph (Ida's) Kreinik and Helena Kreinik

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  4. Solomon Kreinig married in Sedziszow in 1898 to Chana Berger. He ison of Natan and Blima Lichtenthal .
    She is daughter of Aron BERGER and Lea SCHILD.
    http://data.jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.dll?jg~jgsys~jripllat2~&srch1=KREINIK&srch1t=Q&srch1v=S&dates=ALL&gub=LW&usbgn=-524021

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  5. Aug 24 2010 email from Juilien.

    - From : Julien Grassen-Barbe, (researcher code 127191) yonatangb@gmail.com
    - To : David Wilfred Jacobowitz, (researcher code 308642)
    - Subject : The JewishGen Family Finder:
    =======================================================
    Hello,

    My names is Julien (Yonatan). I'm 29 and I try to write a book about my family for 7 years. I live in Paris (France) so I hope you can understand my bad english.
    My grand-mother was born in the shtetl of Sedziszow in 1908. She was Scheva Königsberg. She left the village when her father the shohet and hazzan Hersch Leib Königsberg remarried a woman and moved to America (USA or Argentina ?) after the death of his first young wife, my great grand mother Freida Reizel Königsberg (maiden name: Weichselbaum). I imagine that Freida was buried in the Sedziszow cemetery but I think it was completely destroyed by the nazis...My grand-ma had 2 sisters: Hene and Ruchel and one brother Salomon. After the depart of their father and the death of their mother, they lived with their paternal grand-parents Lammel Königsberg (from Sieniawa) and Leine Elkie Königsberg (maiden name: Ropper) (from Sedziszow). I think it was in Sedziszow or in Przemysl...It is very hard to get informations about this shtetl and about my family cause all the stories I'm talking you about comes from the begining of the 20th century.
    Questions:
    Have you ever heard about the Königsberg, the Ropper, the Weichselbaum from Sedziszow ?
    I know that my great grand mother Freida familly (the Weichselbaum) came from Strzyzow...The Königsberg came from Sieniawa and the Ropper from Sedziszow...
    Is there a yzkor buh or documents about the jewish Sedziszow ?
    Have you ever heard about the synagogue and the religion in Sedziszow ?
    I know that my family was VERY religious and some of them were hassidim...
    Have you ever heard about the Aliyah of the jewish people there ?
    My grand ma moved to Palestine in the 1930's so maybe it was from Sedziszow...
    Do you have any description of the shtetl from your ancestors ?

    All the informations I can collect about Sedziszow can help me.
    Thank you very much.
    Best regards,

    Shalom
    Julien.

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