Grodzisk Mazowiecki

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GRODZISK MAZOWIECKI

GRODZISK MAZOWIECKI , small town in Poland. It had 157 Jewish inhabitants in 1765, 790 in 1856, 2,154 in 1897, 2,756 in 1921 (out of 11,254), and 3,600 in September 1939. Grodzisk was the seat of a ḥasidic dynasty, founded by Elimelech of Grodzisk (d. 1892). His grandson R. Israel Shapiro, a scholar and writer of songs, who after World War i settled in Warsaw, perished in the Holocaust, as did Eliezer b. Abraham Ḥayyim of Falancz, rabbi in Grodzisk from 1913 to 1919. Members of the Grodzisk dynasty settled in Ereẓ Israel. During World War ii, refugees swelled the local Jewish population to 6,000. In February 1941, the Germans transferred the Jews of Grodzisk to the Warsaw Ghetto, and subsequently to the death camp of Treblinka.

bibliography:

Bleter far Geshikhte, 1 pt. 3–4 (1948), 146–8.