The First to be Destroyed

The Jewish Community of Kleczew and the Beginning of the Final Solution

• Author(s): Anetta Głowacka-Penczyńska, Tomasz Kawski, Witold Mędykowski,
• Publisher: Academic Studies Press
• Pages: 621
• ISBN_10: 1618112848
  ISBN_13: 9781618112842
  
• Language: en
• Categories: History / Europe / Eastern , History / Jewish , History / Modern / 20th Century / Holocaust , Social Science / Jewish Studies , Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity ,

Description:... The Jewish community of the city of Kleczew came into existence in the sixteenth century. It remained large and strong throughout the next four hundred years, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it constituted 40-60% of the total population. The German army entered Kleczew on September 15, 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. The communities of Kleczew and the vicinity were among the first Jewish collectives in Europe to be totally destroyed. The events presented in this book reveal that the organization of deportations and the methods of mass murder conducted in this district, by Kommando Lange, served as a model that would be applied later in the death camps during the mass extermination of Polish and European Jewry. If so, it was in the woods near Kleczew that the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" began.