Lagow, Poland

LAGOW Kielce district, Poland. Sixty Jews were present in 1827, increasing to 1,269 (total 2,527) in 1921. Difficult economic circumstances both before and after WWI led many to leave in the 1920s. Between the World Wars, the Zionists with their youth movements were active while Gur and Aleksandrow Hasidim gathered around their shtiblekh. With the German occupation of September 1939, many of the young fled to Soviet occupied territory. A regime of forced labor was instituted and a Judenrat established. Refugees from Vienna and Radom arrived in 1941 and in March 1942 the Jewish quarter was sealed off as a ghetto. In July 1942, 460 young Jews were led away to an unknown destination and on 27 October, after the sick and old were murdered in their beds along with children, 2,000 were transported to Kielce, from where they were soon deported to the Treblinka death camp.