Raciąż is a
town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than city, cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares ...
in
Płońsk County,
Masovian Voivodeship
The Masovian Voivodeship, also known as the Mazovia Province ( pl, województwo mazowieckie ) is a voivodeship (province) in east-central Poland, with its capital located in the city of Warsaw, which also serves as the capital of the country. The ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...
, with 4,585 inhabitants (2004). Its history dates to 10th century.
History
A Jewish population had lived in Raciąż since the 1600s. Between 1857 and 1931, the
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
population of the town varied between 35% and 45%, which was typical of small
shtetl
A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before ...
s in the region. At the beginning of World War II, there were about 1700 Jews in Raciąż. The German invaders rounded up most of the Jews and deported them to Warsaw and other larger towns in 1939. Some were sent to labor camps too. Almost all of Raciąż' Jews were murdered during the war, but about ten young survivors returned to town after the war. Most were murdered one night by unknown people, either nationalists or thugs. After that, the remainder left. See Virtual Sztetl.
See also
*
History of the Jews in Poland
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the l ...
*
List of shtetls in Poland
*
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
Ghettos were established by Nazi Germany in hundreds of locations across occupied Poland after the German invasion of Poland. Yitzhak Arad, ''Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.'' Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987.''Biulety ...
*
List of villages and towns depopulated of Jews during the Holocaust
References
Cities and towns in Masovian Voivodeship
Płońsk County
Shtetls
Holocaust locations in Poland
{{Płońsk-geo-stub