Gora Kalwaria
[Yiddish: Ger, Gur] - A city in the Mazovia
voivodship, thirty kilometers from Warsaw. In 1670, Gora, as
it was
known then, received its town charter and was named "New
Jerusalem"; it
also was granted the privilege known as de non tolerandis
Judaeis. The
first Jews settled in Gora after the third partition, when
the town
belonged to Prussia. After the Congress of Vienna, Gora
Kalwaria was
part of the Kingdom of Poland. During the mid-nineteenth
century, it
became a Chasidic center (Chasidim of Gora Kalwaria). In
1897, the
Jewish Community of Gora Kalwaria had approximately 3,000
people (55% of
the population); in addition, many Chasidic pilgrims from
elsewhere
would also visit the town. The Chasidim of Gora Kalwaria had
a dominant
position among the Orthodox Jews of Poland until 1939.
Before the Second
World War, about 3,500 Jews lived in the city (48% of the
population).
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In 1940, the Germans created a ghetto there,
where several hundred people were sent from Lodz,
Aleksandrow,
Pabianice, Wloclawek, Sierpc and Kalisz. The ghetto's total
population
was approximately 3,500. In February 1941, its residents
were deported
to the Warsaw ghetto, where they shared the same fate as
that city's
Jews. Several hundred people were shot on the spot.
After the war, Jewish life in Gora Kalwaria did not
revive. There is
still a cemetery with the ohel (cemetery chapel) of the
tzaddik Yitzhak
Meir Rothenberg Alter, as well as the building where he used
to lived.
Both are now visited by Chasidic pilgrims from Israel and
the United
States whose ancestors originally came from Gora Kalwaria.
(H.W./CM)
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