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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).


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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