The first to be destroyed : : the Jewish community of Kleczew and the beginning of the final solution / / Anetta Głowacka-Penczyńska, Tomasz Kawski, Witold Mędykowski ; edited by Tuvia Horev ; book design by Ivan Grave.

• Superior document: Judaism and Jewish Life
• Funder: Knowledge Unlatched
• VerfasserIn: Głowacka-Penczyńska, Anetta,; Kawski, Tomasz, 1969-; Mędykowski, Witold,
• TeilnehmendeR: Kawski, Tomasz, 1969-; Mędykowski, Witold,; Horev, Tuvia,; Grave, Ivan Platonovich, 1874-1960,
• Author: Knowledge Unlatched
• Place / Publishing House: Boston, [Massachusetts] : : Academic Studies Press,, 2015.; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Judaism and Jewish life.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (450 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

The Jewish community of the city of Kleczew came into existence in the sixteenth century. It remained large and strong throughout the next four hundred years, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it constituted 40-60% of the total population. The German army entered Kleczew on September 15, 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. The communities of Kleczew and the vicinity were among the first Jewish collectives in Europe to be totally destroyed. The events presented in this book reveal that the organization of deportations and the methods of mass murder conducted in this district, by Kommando Lange, served as a model that would be applied later in the death camps during the mass extermination of Polish and European Jewry. If so, it was in the woods near Kleczew that the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" began.

Table of Contents

Front matter -- Contents -- List of Photographs -- List of Tables -- List of Maps -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Introduction -- PART One. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF KLECZEW -- Chapter 1. The Old Polish Period (Fifteenth-Eighteenth Centuries) -- Chapter 2. The Partition and Foreign Occupation Period in Poland (Late Eighteenth-Early Twentieth Centuries) -- Chapter 3. Interwar Kleczew (1918-1939) -- PART Two. "IN THE EYE OF THE STORM": JEWS IN OCCUPIED KLECZEW AND REICHSGAU WARTHELAND -- Chapter 4. The First Occupation Years: "Resettlement" and Deportation -- Chapter 5. Forced Labor -- PART Three. FIRST TO BE DESTROYED: THE BEGINNING OF ORGANIZED MASS EXTERMINATION -- Chapter 6. "Piloting" the Organized Mass Extermination of Jews -- Chapter 7. Establishment and Operation of the First Extermination Camp -- PART Four. EPILOGUE: THE POSTWAR PERIOD -- Chapter 8. Kleczew after the War -- ANNEXES -- Annex 1: Documents, Letters, and Testimonies -- Annex 2: Stories of Descendants and Survivors of the Jewish Community of Kleczew -- Annex 3: Tables -- List of Abbreviations -- Archival Sources -- Bibliography -- Index