Dukla was a shtetl (the Yiddish word for a small town) now located in southern Poland, about 180 km. (110 miles) southeast of Krakow. From 1776 to 1919, Dukla was in the western part of Galicia, the northernmost province of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. The town became a part of Poland in 1919, when Poland was reconstituted as a nation by the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I.
The first recorded presence of a Jewish community in Dukla goes back to the 1600s. In 1674 there were 23 Jews in Dukla; a number which grew to 347 Dukla Jews by 1764. Dukla's Jewish community experienced significant growth in the 1800s, and by the latter 1800s the Jewish community came to comprise a large majority of Dukla's population. In 1881, Dukla had 2553 Jews, which equaled 84.2% of the town's population. In 1900, it had 2539 Jews, equaling 79.0% of the town's population. In 1916, it had 2250 Jews, equaling 75.8 percent of the town's population. And in 1921, it had 1509 Jews, equaling 72.5% of the town's population, which had declined during World War I when many fled to avoid the nearby battles that resulted in large parts of Dukla being damaged by fire, and the town being occupied by Russian troops in 1914-1915. Between the World Wars, Dukla was rebuilt, and its total population grew to almost 4000, 64% of whom were Jewish.
Relations between Dukla's Jewish and non-Jewish (ethnic ”Polish”) communities were historically generally good, with a compromise political power-sharing arrangement in place. In the Dukla city council, seats were distributed so that the Jews had two more seats than the Christians, while the mayor of Dukla was always a Christian. In turn, Dr. Dawid Smulowicz, a Jewish attorney at law, held the post of deputy mayor of Dukla for many years. During their years of living together in Dukla, there were never any reported pogroms or collective protests in Dukla against the Jewish population.
During World War II, German troops occupied Dukla on September 8, 1939. The Nazis immediately proceeded to impress Dukla Jews into forced-labor work details. In October 1939, Dukla's ”nonessential” Jews (those who were not workers considered vital to the German economy and occupation) were ordered to leave Dukla and travel East across the San River to the Soviet controlled area of eastern Galicia. A group of Dukla Jews did leave for exile in the Soviet territory, but most of Dukla's Jews managed to hide and later return to the town. In 1940, the Germans established a "Judenrat" (Jewish Council) in Dukla that was required to supply daily forced-labor quotas, gather money from the Jewish community to pay imposed fines, and supervise the surrender of Jewish valuables. The economic situation for Dukla's Jews steadily worsened, and in 1941 a public kitchen was established by the Judische Soziale Selbsthilfe [Jewish Self-Help] to provide meals for the needy. In early 1942, about 600 Jews from other nearby villages, whose belongings and property had been confiscated, were forced to relocate to Dukla. This further increased the economic burden imposed on Dukla's Jewish community. In the spring of 1942, a closed ghetto was established in Dukla.
During summer 1942, Nazi Germany systematically annihilated the Jewish communities of southern Poland (”Aktion Reinhard”). Dukla's Jewish population was destroyed on August 13, 1942. After being ordered to assemble in a town square, Dukla's Jews were divided into three groups. First, Dukla's Jewish intelligentsia, along with the town's sick and disabled Jews - about 300 persons in all - were taken about 12 km. (7 miles) south to the Barwinek woods in Tylawa, Poland, where they were shot and thrown into a prepared pit. (At that killing site, a memorial to those murdered now stands over their mass grave in the woods.) Next, all Jewish men over age 35, all Jewish women, and all Jewish children under age 15 - about 2000 souls in all - were taken to the train station near Iwonicz, Poland, placed in freight train boxcars, and sent to the Belzec death camp where they were gassed upon arrival. [Belzec (along with Sobibor and Treblinka) was one of three ”Aktion Reinhard” death camps established in the Lublin region of Poland. Approximately 435,000 Jews were murdered at Belzec during the camp's operation, which lasted from March to December 1942. The Germans did not record the names of those murdered at Belzec.] Dukla's remaining 300 or so Jewish men, ages 15 to 35, were formed into two work camps established at Dukla, from which they were forced to work for two German companies, the ”Arthur-Walda, Breslau” company for whom about 140 Dukla Jews worked rebuilding a local road to Barwinek, and the "Emil Ludwig, Munich" company for whom about 170 Dukla Jews worked in a nearby stone-quarry in Lipowica, 4 km. (2 miles) south of Dukla. Both groups of workers were mercilessly exploited, with guards killing anyone that did not keep up the pace. The two Dukla work camps were closed in December 1942, with the surviving prisoner remnants taken to other work camps in Poland. Only about 50 Dukla Jews caught in the Holocaust survived the war. After the war, 14 Jewish survivors returned to Dukla. However, as Dukla was largely destroyed, they initially settled in Krosno, and most eventually moved to Israel. After 1947, there were no Jews left in Dukla.
[Historical summary prepared by Philip Ross, and in large part taken from his book "The Rosenbluth Family of Dukla" (© 2018), ISBN 978-107322206-9-0.]
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The website "Shtetl Routes". Vestiges of Jewish cultural
heritage in cross-border tourism" (www.shetlroutes.eu) contains
a wonderful guidebook description of Dukla, which can be viewed
either as a webpage Click Here
or in a .pdf format: Click
Here
Translation of "Dukla" chapter from Pinkas Hakehillot Polin (Published by Yad Vashem): Click Here
An excellent article by Agnieszka Huzarska, published in Journal of Health Click Here
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Copyright © (2022) Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Ross.
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