A Guide to Jewish Kielce

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Where does one start today to explore traces of the Jewish past in Kielce, discernible in the contemporary city only to the experienced eye of someone with at least some knowledge of Jewish culture and custom? Of the 54000 residents of pre-war Kielce, 18000 were Jews. In other words, one-third of the town's population was Jewish. Here and there in the town centre, on the right-hand side of a door frame, under several layers of paint, you can still see the slanting protuberance of a mezuzah. Here and there, in one of the old tenements on Zagnariska or Jasna Street, or in a courtyard on Wolnosci Square, you can see the built-in bay in which Jewish families used to make their booths and sit down to eat at the Feast of Tabernacles. Nowadays few people even know what a mezuzah or a tabernacle is, but these are traces of people who are part of the history of this town. These are no more than traces. The world of Kielce's Jews is gone. But the memory must not be lost. TABLE OF * Prologue I; * The first forty years 7; * A turbulent start to the century 23; * Between the two wars 35; * The Holocaust 61; * The Pogrom 77; * Epilogue 87; * Traces of Kielce's Jews 105.