• Knishin
• Knisin
• Kniszyn
• Knyshin

• 58°19"/22°55", 26 km NW of Bialystok, Poland.

Click here to view 1902 map of Poland showing Knyszyn.

The Jewish settlement near this royal court dates back to the 16th century.  The de non tolerandis judaeis privilege had limited the settlement until the Partition of Poland.  The 1921 census recorded a population of 1235 Jews (35% of the population).  The town had two brick synagogues, a private prayer house and a mikva.  The oldest wooden synagogue was destroyed in the town fire in 1915.  The last rabbi of Knyszyn was Rabbi Miszkinski.

Links to Jewish Knyszyn

• Jews in Knyszyn in the Early Years and During the Occupation
• List of Names, with Dates of Death, from Some of the Approximately 700 Tombstones in the Old Knyszyn Cemetery
• Statement of Atrocities in Knyszyn

• Entering Knyszyn; hay field; farm cemetery
• Knyszyn Town Square; a snowy day in Knyszyn
• Fire brigades from Knyszyn and vicinity; grammar school
• Shlomo and Dincha Cywan with son, Meyer; distribution of pamphlets in town square
• Gravestones from Old Knyszyn Cemetery
• Small pile of rubble constituting remains of synagogue; typical modern-day dwellings
• Knyszyn Forest; leaving Knyszyn.

• Cohen, Chester G., "Shtetl Finder."  Jewish Communities in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries in the Pale of Settlement of Russia and Poland, and in Lithuania, Latvia, Galicia, and Bukovina, with Names of Residents.  Periday Co., Los Angeles, 1980, p. 37.

"Knishin -- Knyszyn, NW of Bialystok.  Birthplace of Rabbi Moshe Landinski, born 1863.  At 22 he married the daughter of Israel Neiman in Knishin.  Their sons moved to Vekshna in Lithuania, Gateshead in England, and New York.  Their two daughters moved to Troki in Lithuania and to Liverpool.  Kagan  7679."
 

• Kagan, Berl, "Hebrew Subscription Lists."  With an Index to 8,767 Communities in Europe and North Africa.  The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and KTVA Publishing House, Inc., New York, 1975, p. 269.

Subscribers listed from Knyszyn are as follows:  "#7679.  Knyszyn:   The fathers of the Rabbi Natan, Shlomo Benyan, Moshe Devri, Eliezer Dameshek, Mafik Margoliot, Zvi Karni, Lev Rahashi, Zvi Tiferet, Shaul Tiferet".  (Names transliterated from Hebrew to English by Jackie Ziff).
 

• Rabin, D., ed., "Grodno."  In vol 9 of Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora:  Memorial Books of Countries and Communities.  Jerusalem, 1973, p 621.  (In Hebrew.)

"...A number of young people from Grodno who had gone to Bialystok left that ghetto for the forest, in August, 1943, and operated in the Knyszyn and Jasionowka areas under the name, "White Furs," mainly taking revenge on local peasants who had collaborated with the Germans. The group finally managed to join a Soviet partisan unit, and fought with it up to the liberation."

• Shulman, Abraham (foreword by Isaac Bashevis Singer),  The Old Country, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, p 42-3.

Photo (two-page spread) entitled, "On Purim, a band of Jewish musicians in Knyszyn, Poland, dressed in military uniforms performed to raise money for charity."

• Weiner, Miriam, "Jewish Roots in Poland.  Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories."  Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, New York, p. 224.

According to Ms Weiner, Knyszyn death records are available in the Urzad Stanu Cywilnego (local town halls in Poland generally holding documents less than 100 years old) for 1882-4; 1891-3; 1895; 1897-1898; 1900-1; 1906-9; 1911; 1914 and marriage records for 1889; 1894; 1897; 1899-1900; 1905; 1907-9; 1913-14; 1931-2; 1937.
 

• Weisser, Michael R., "A Brotherhood of Memory:  Jewish Landsmanshaftn in the New World."  Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, NY, p. 56.

"...The shtetl of Knyszyn, in Poland, had an orchestra and a string band; the latter performed nearly every weekend for private parties or community-wide festivals."

• Wiesenthal, Simon.  "Every Day Remembrance Day.  A Chronicle of Jewish Martyrdom."  Henry Holt and Co., NY, p. 252.

"November 13, 1942:  A total of 1,500 Jews fall victim to the last Aktion against the Jewish community of Kniszyn, district of Bialystok, Poland.  Some of them are murdered on the spot, others are deported to the Treblinka extermination camp."

• JewishGen Family Finder for Knyszyn.
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Copyright © 1999, Jackie Ziff