Kolbuszowa | Subcarpathian Voivodeship

Kolbuszowa is a small town in southeastern Poland, located in the Sandomierz Forest in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship. It serves as the capital of Kolbuszowa County and is part of the historic region of Lesser Poland.

The first mention of a Jewish presence in Kolbuszowa dates back to the early 16th century, when Jews arrived as buyers of locally produced furniture. Over time, Jews in Kolbuszowa became skilled in various crafts, including carpentry, tailoring, shoemaking, baking, and butchery.

By the mid-18th century, Jews made up approximately half of the town’s population. The Jewish community had at least two synagogues, a cemetery, a mikveh, and kosher butcher shops.

The interwar period brought significant economic hardship for the Jewish population, prompting many to leave the town. According to various sources, between 1,756 and 2,500 Jews lived in Kolbuszowa in 1939.

Zofia N., a Yahad witness born in 1925, recalled:

"The local intelligentsia in Kolbuszowa was mainly Jewish—there was a doctor, a lawyer, the mill owner. Jewish and non-Jewish children went to the same school, and overall relations between both communities were pretty good."

The Germans began subjecting local Jews to forced labor and looting their homes immediately upon arriving in Kolbuszowa. When the Gestapo arrived in the autumn of 1939, it ordered all Jews to leave the town, threatening to execute a group of Jewish prisoners if the order was not followed. In response to this threat, many Jews fled to the Soviet-occupied zone, but a large number eventually returned to Kolbuszowa a few weeks later.

In December 1939, all Jews over the age of 12 were forced to wear armbands bearing a blue Star of David. In March 1940, a Jewish Council (Judenrat) was established to assist the German authorities in identifying and supervising Jewish forced laborers. In September 1940, 50 Jews were sent to the forced labor camp in Rzeszów, and in November, around 80 were sent to the Pustków camp.

In June 1941, shortly before the establishment of the Kolbuszowa ghetto, Jews living in the market square were forcibly relocated to Rzeszów by order of Landkommissar Twardon. The ghetto itself was created on June 13. The remaining Jews were given 48 hours to vacate their homes and move into the ghetto, located in the poorest section of town. To make space for the ghetto, about 90 Polish residents were relocated. Jewish shops were handed over to Polish citizens under German direction.

Living conditions in the ghetto were extremely harsh. Disease, starvation, and executions were widespread. In the summer of 1941, a significant number of Jews from Kolbuszowa were sent to the concentration camp in Huta Komorowska. In January 1942, posters were put up prohibiting Germans and other "Aryans" from entering the ghetto without special passes. In February 1942, a Jewish Police force was established to maintain order.

On April 28, 1942, Gestapo officers arrested and executed 20 Jews from the ghetto. Their bodies were initially buried in a mass grave at the Jewish cemetery, but were later reburied in family plots by surviving relatives.

On June 25, 1942, the Germans ordered the liquidation of the Kolbuszowa ghetto. Approximately 100 SS men surrounded the area and went from house to house, gathering the Jewish residents near the ghetto gates. Jewish possessions were loaded onto carts requisitioned from local peasants, but there was no room for the Jews themselves, who were forced to walk the 35 km to Rzeszów under the watch of German and Polish police. The evacuation lasted two days. Afterward, abandoned Jewish homes were looted by local residents.

On June 28, several Jews were brought back from the Rzeszów ghetto to Kolbuszowa to dismantle abandoned Jewish houses. The remainder of the town’s Jewish population was deported from the Rzeszów ghetto either to the Jasionka camp—where many were murdered or died of starvation—or to the Bełżec extermination camp.

The liquidation of the ghetto was accompanied by shootings. Polish archival sources claim that approximately 1,000 Jews were executed and buried at the Jewish cemetery, though Yahad’s investigation was unable to verify such a large-scale execution. In fact, several pre-interviewed witnesses denied that a mass killing of that size took place in Kolbuszowa.

Yahad researchers did, however, document that in 1942, several Jews were shot individually near the local railway, in an area known as “Kolejowisko.” Due to the lack of direct eyewitnesses and significant changes to the landscape over the years, the precise location of these shootings could not be determined.

During a second research mission to Kolbuszowa County in July 2024, the Yahad team identified another execution site in the Nowa Wieś forest, about 2 km from Kolbuszowa, where approximately 250 Jews were killed on June 10, 1942. Some sources indicate that the victims were Jews from the Rzeszów ghetto, but given that many Jews from Kolbuszowa had already been deported to Rzeszów by June 1942, it is likely that Kolbuszowa Jews were also among the victims.

This is confirmed by testimony from Meilech Notowicz, a Holocaust survivor born in Kolbuszowa on October 31, 1927, who stated: "On that day, the ghetto was surrounded. Ukrainian and German police shot 20 Jews. We were taken to Rzeszów. Eighty were sent back to Kolbuszowa... Jews hiding in the woods were still being caught. On Rosh Hashanah, 200 Jews from the surrounding labor camps—Biesiadka, Huta Komarowska, Pustków, and Rzeszów—were rounded up and shot in Nowa Wieś."

Through local interviews, the Yahad team identified the exact location of the execution site and the original burial place, about 100 meters inside the forest from the current memorial. After the war, the bodies were exhumed and reburied in the Jewish cemetery in Kolbuszowa. Today, a monument stands by the roadside in Nowa Wieś forest to honor the victims.

Although a few Jews from Kolbuszowa managed to survive the war, the town’s Jewish community was never reestablished.

Go to the townpage at the Kehilalinks Jewishgen website