Iwieniec

The Jewish community of Iwieniec seems to have been established in the mid-18th Century. The town is renowned for its pottery and tiles industry, so it is no surprise that many local Jews made their living from the manufacture and sale of ceramics. In 1897, 1,343 Jews lived in the town, comprising 50.3 percent of its total population. After 1920, Iwieniec became part of Poland, and 945 Jews lived there in 1921. In the 1920s, the town underwent a degree of economic revival. It had three schools that catered to the Jewish community: a Hebrew-language Tarbut school, an Orthodox Horev school, and a Polish state school; there was also a Hebrew-language kindergarten there. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Iwieniec was home to an estimated 1,200 Jews. In September 1939, the Soviets occupied the town, and all forms of independent Jewish social and political life were suppressed. The more affluent Jewish businessmen were deported to the east. In June 1941, the Soviet-German War broke out; the Wehrmacht entered the town on June 27. On the next day, the Germans shot 34 Jews as punishment for alleged "medical malpractice" in the treatment of a downed German pilot. On July 14, an SS unit from nearby Wolożyn shot 14 members of the "Jewish intelligentsia". On September 5, a unit of the SiPo (the German security police) murdered 50 (or 76, according to another account) Jews. Sometime in the fall of 1941, most probably in November, a ghetto was established in Iwieniec. From time to time, the Germans would send able-bodied Jews from Iwieniec to the Nowogródek Ghetto and the Dworzec labor camp, while simultaneously moving Jews from Rubieżewicze and elsewhere to Iwieniec. On June 9, 1942, the Nazis liquidated the Iwieniec Ghetto. Its inmates, who numbered 1,025 (or about 800, according to other sources), were taken to the northern edge of the town and murdered there. Only a few Jewish "specialists" were left in the town for a while, but they, too, were probably killed later. Iwieniec was liberated by the Red Army on July 6, 1944.