Zgierz is today practically a suburb of Łódź - a dozen or so minutes by tram or regional train. Few people look here for traces of the town's Jewish history, yet it is at least as dramatic as in many larger centres of the region - including the local tale of a synagogue said to have collapsed on its own.
The wooden synagogue and the legend of its fall
The first, wooden synagogue in Zgierz was built in 1840 on today's Łódzka street. According to local tradition, the building collapsed or burned down in the 1850s in dramatic circumstances - in the version passed down among the descendants of Zgierz's Jews, a fire broke out during Kol Nidre, the most important prayer of Yom Kippur, and caused panic among the women gathered in the women's gallery. The exact course of those events is difficult to reconstruct with certainty today - historical sources confirm only that the building ceased to exist in this period, while the cause remains partly a matter of local tradition.
Regardless of the exact course of that story, in 1860 a new, brick synagogue was built on the same site - sturdier and larger than its wooden predecessor.
The end of the synagogue during the occupation
The fate of the brick synagogue during the Second World War is well documented. On 10 September 1939 the building was set on fire by the Germans, but local Jewish residents managed to put out the blaze. Not for long - on 27 October 1940 the synagogue was set on fire again, this time the building burned to the ground and was never rebuilt.
No formal ghetto was set up in Zgierz. On 26 December 1939 the Germans gathered local Jews at a sports stadium and deported them from the town. According to available sources, only about 350 people of this community survived the war.
The cemetery that was saved
The Jewish cemetery in Zgierz was established in 1826, and in 1885 it was enlarged to 1.5 hectares. Between 1940 and 1941 the Germans systematically devastated it: gravestones were used as material for road building, trees were cleared, and the whole area was ploughed over. For decades after the war the site remained forgotten.
Only in 1992, on the initiative of a descendant of Zgierz's Jews living in Canada, was the cemetery cleared and fenced. This is one of those cases in the region where a private, grassroots initiative led to the saving of a memorial site that institutions had neglected for years.
What can be seen in Zgierz today
The spot where the synagogue once stood is not marked in any particular way in the town today, and the best way to learn the history of the Jewish community is to visit the Muzeum Miasta Zgierza (Zgierz Town Museum), which tells the story of the town's multicultural past - alongside the Jewish thread, also that of the German and Polish weavers who together built Zgierz's economic success in the 19th century.
This multicultural context is well complemented by the Park Kulturowy Miasto Tkaczy (Town of Weavers Cultural Park), devoted to the settlers who built Zgierz's textile industry alongside Jewish merchants and craftsmen.
In practice: how to get there and how much time to spend
From Łódź, Zgierz can be reached by suburban tram or regional train in under half an hour, which makes this trip one of the easiest to fit into an afternoon, without needing to plan a whole day around it. An hour is enough to see the Muzeum Miasta Zgierza, and it is worth checking the opening hours beforehand, since like most small regional museums they can be limited on certain days of the week.
You can read more about the Jewish history of the Łódź region in the Łódź Wielu Kultur (Łódź of Many Cultures) series and in the Poznaj Łódź (Discover Łódź) section, including the article on the Synagoga Reicherów (Reicher Family Synagogue) in Łódź - the only synagogue in Łódź that survived the war, unlike the one in Zgierz.
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