Before the outbreak of World War II, the Jews constituted 60 percent of the local population. Called “Oshpitzin” by the local Jews, the town had over 20 synagogues and prayer houses. Among them was the Great Synagogue. It was built in 1588 on a plot of the Jewish community donated by Jan Piotraszewski, a townsman and Oświęcim elder. Over the centuries it was destroyed several times.
For decades the Great Synagogue was the place around which the life of the Jewish community in Oświęcim was concentrated, said Tomasz Kuncewicz, director of the Auschwitz Jewish Center, which runs the local Jewish Museum and maintains the only synagogue left in the town.
On the night of November 29-30, 1939, the Great Synagogue was burned to the ground by the Nazis. Its last traces were removed on the German order by a specially created commando consisting of Auschwitz prisoners, mainly Poles, who, as part of forced labor, were forced to complete the demolition of the building in the summer of 1941.
All pictures in the article: Andrzej Rudiak