Raciąż is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

Płońsk County __NOTOC__ Płońsk County ( pl, powiat płoński) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Masovian Voivodeship, east-central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government ...

Masovian Voivodeship The Masovian Voivodeship, also known as the Mazovia Province ( pl, województwo mazowieckie ) is a voivodeship (province) in east-central Poland, with its capital located in the city of Warsaw, which also serves as the capital of the country. The ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

, with 4,585 inhabitants (2004). Its history dates to 10th century.

History

A Jewish population had lived in Raciąż since the 1600s. Between 1857 and 1931, the

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

population of the town varied between 35% and 45%, which was typical of small

shtetl A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before ...

s in the region. At the beginning of World War II, there were about 1700 Jews in Raciąż. The German invaders rounded up most of the Jews and deported them to Warsaw and other larger towns in 1939. Some were sent to labor camps too. Almost all of Raciąż' Jews were murdered during the war, but about ten young survivors returned to town after the war. Most were murdered one night by unknown people, either nationalists or thugs. After that, the remainder left. See Virtual Sztetl.

References

Cities and towns in Masovian Voivodeship Płońsk County Shtetls Holocaust locations in Poland {{Płońsk-geo-stub

History

See also

References