The Museum of Family History
HONORING AND PRESERVING THE MEMORY OF OUR ANCESTORS
FOR THE PRESENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS
 

HOME          SITE MAP          ABOUT THE MUSEUM          FEEDBACK          OPPORTUNITIES          LINKS

 


Rose Cooperman
and her Children
Zambrow, Poland
cir 1927

TOWN INDEX
Zambrów

also known as Zambrov, Zambruv, Zembrov, Zembrova, Zembrove and Zombrov
Located in Lomza Gubernia in present-day Poland
15.4 miles SSE of Lomza...38.6 miles WSW of Bialystok...72.9 miles NE of Warszawa
Longitude 52 degrees, 59 minutes, Latitude 22 degrees, 15 minutes
Museum of Family History links that refer to Zambrów:

A Short History of Zambrów

Postcards from Home:
The Main Shul of Zambrow

The Road to Bialystok

Jagodnik/Chaims/Solomonik Families

The Archie Marcus Collection--The Yablonkas

The Yarosalimski Family

School Photos from Zambrow 1920s

The Srebrnik Family

Rywka Brzoza and Elsa Rywka Kowalefska

The Cooperman Family

The Leibe Rozing Family

Zambrow Students 1928
Young Beitarim

Meishl Dzevko

The Slowik Family

The Zedeck Family

The Jelen Family (Hy Yellin Collection)

The Families of Meir and Sarah Jelin

Benjamin Bednovitch

Unknown Bednowicz Relative

The Furmanowicz Sisters
Srulke Lichtensztejn
Group Photo No. 1
The Piekarewicz-Sosnowicz Families
Lipman Dov Ber Choroszcz
The Children of Lipman Dov Ber Choroszcz
Mordka Choroszcz

Identities Unknown

How We Worked: The Apple Orchard
Photos of Zambrow 1930s
Synagogues of Europe: The Synagogue at Zambrow
Visions of Zambrow 1985
How Our Families Came to America: From Zambrow to Ellis Island
The Map Room: Zambrow and its surrounds 1915-25
Zambrow town map
Zembrower Society Meeting in Israel
Living in America: Michael Lasky
Society Gates: Zambrow
The Goldberg-Ronik Wedding Party
Landsmanshaftn in America:
Workmen's Circle Zembrover Progressive Branch 149
Landsmanshaftn in America: Testimonial/Memorial Meeting for Ben Miller
Landsmanshaftn in Israel: Zembrower Society Meeting
Landsmanshaftn in Israel: Committee of Zambrowe in Israel
Cemetery Project: Zambrow society plots in New York
** Zambrow Forum (Museum of Family History discussion group)
Trip to Zambrow: Morris Spector, 1992


External links of interest to Zambrów researchers:

 Kirkut in Zambrow
 JRI Poland Zambrow Surname List
 
JRI Poland Zambrow page



*If you have material that you would like to add to this site that you believe would be of interest to other Zambrow researchers, please contact Steve Lasky at postmaster@museumoffamilyhistory.com .
Also visit other web pages that have been created for more Lomza Gubernia towns and cities:
 

 

Zambrów is a small town of about 25,000 inhabitants in northeastern Poland. It is located at the crossroads of the routes from Warszawa to Białystok and from Łomza to Siedlce.  Zambrów is located by the riverside of Jabłonka, at the border between the regions of Mazovia and Podlasie. The name of the town comes from Old-Polish noun “zzbr” (European bison), that means a place where bisons live.

The beginnings of the town were connected with stanitza (located at the edge of the wilderness) established for lands owners - Mazovian princes who were hunting in those areas. As early as the 13th century, Zambrów was a very important settlement with a separate parish. In about 1430 the town received civic rights. In 1526, after the extinction of Mazovian princes male line of descent, Zambrów, with the whole Mazovia region, was annexed to the Kingdom of Poland and became a royal town. After the incorporation of the Mazovian Duchy to the Kingdom of Poland, Zambrów became the capital of the administrative district in the district of Łomza in Mazovian province. The rapid development of Zambrów stopped during the Swedish-Polish war in 1655 for almost one hundred and fifty years. After the third partition of Poland, Zambrów was located in Prussia and, after peace was achieved at Tilsit in 1807, in the Duchy of Warsaw. After the Congress of Vienna, Zambrów was annexed to the Congress Kingdom of Poland in the Russian empire. After the January 1863 uprising, Zambrów lost town rights. In the eighth decade of the nineteenth century, in the southern part of the town, the construction of barracks (the biggest in this part of Russia) was started. From this time until the early part of the fifth decade of the twentieth century, the town development was under army influence. In 1919, Zambrów regained town rights. During the Interwar Period, in Zambrów, the 71st regiment of infantry was stationed, there were Officer Cadets of Infantry Reserve School and Mazovian School of Officer Cadets. In 1939, Zambrów was for a short time occupied by the German army that murdered many of civilians and captives. Based on the Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty from 1939, Zambrów had been situated in Soviet Union (Belorussian SSR). During the Soviet occupation, people from Zambrów and its surroundings were being sent into exile to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The town was again occupied by the German army in June 1941. At this time in Zambrów, there were prisoner-of-war camps for Soviet and Italian captives as well as for the Jews and Polish people. Zambrów was occupied by the Soviet army in August 1944. At this time many favoured independence. Anti-communist squads were taking action in forests around the town. In Zambrów (at the place of barracks), as a result of a six-year plan, cotton works were built. This led to rapid development of the town. For more about Zambrów, its history, monuments and present, visit www.zambrow.pl .

The presence of Jews in Zambrów is first noted during the eighteenth century. The few Jews who lived in Zambrów at the end of eighteenth century (thirty-two Jews – 5.8% of the total population of five-hundred and fifty-four people) were not organized into a community. At this time, Zambrów was under the jurisdiction of Tykocin. The Jews of Zambrów came mostly from the neighboring community of Jabłonka where Jews had buried their dead, and also from Zambrów, where the Jewish community had been established in 1830. An upsurge in the Jewish population in Zambrów occurred in the early nineteenth century (the number of then increased tenfold). From this time, the number of Orthodox Jews was still increasing, outnumbering the Polish population (1859 - 65.2 %; 1897 - 64.8 %; 1909 – 58.7 %). An influx of Polish people and the development of the military garrison changed the percentage of Jews in Zambrów. Until the beginning of the Second World War, Jews in Zambrów accounted for fifty percent of the total number of people (in the middle thirties of the twentieth century, 3,330 Jews lived in Zambrów, out of a total population of 7,620).

In 1895, a splendid synagogue was built. Some Jews were engaged in the creation of Soviet laws. In the summer of 1920, after the Polish-Soviet war, Zambrów was under control of the Red Army for a short time. Zambrów Jews engaged in petty trade and crafts. What advantage they had led to many conflicts with local Christians. The biggest took place in the second decade of the twentieth century, when in view of a camp of National Democratic agitators, Jewish businesses were blocked. However, these conflicts did not have a great influence on the buoyant development of the Jewish part of the town. During the interwar period, Zambrów was the home to many Jewish social organizations (e.g. Jewish Boy Scouts), political parties (Bund, Poalei Zion), educational (schools, kindergartens), cultural and athletic organizations. There were also Jewish houses of prayer, a synagogue, cinema and hospital. Jewish population and clergy took part in town life, participated in patriotic commemorations. Services were celebrated not only in the Catholic church, but also in synagogue. The Rabbi in Zambrów dispensed ministrations in the military garrison.

Due to the Molotow-Ribbentrop Treaty of 1939, Zambrów was under Soviet administration, although in September 1939, Zambrów was for a few days occupied by Nazi squads. At this time, the first murders were committed - Polish civilians, prisoners and about fifty Jews died. During the Soviet occupation, Jews from German-occupied Poland and those living well into the U.S.S.R.) were coming in Zambrów. Zambrów fell once again to the Germans in June 1941. At this time, about ninety people were murdered. In August and September, two actions were carried out in which over two thousand Jews were murdered in the regions of Szumowo and Kołaki.

The Jews who remained were forced into a ghetto created in the centre of the town. In the barracks, a temporary camp for Jews from the vicinity of Zambrów was set up. In the winter of 1942-1943, both the ghetto and the camp were liquidated. People were transported to Czyzew and then to Auschwitz.

In Zambrów today, there is almost no trace of Jews. The Jewish part of a town was damaged during the Second World War, though later it was rebuilt. There is no Boznicza Street with a synagogue anymore. Only the Jewish cemetery and a few tenement houses, built at the turn of nineteenth century, still exist.

Jews from Zambrów emigrated from the start of twentieth century. In the twenties, Shlomo Goren, an Israel rabbi born in Zambrów, left the town. After the war, only a few survivors from Zambrów and the vicinity, remained. Others returned from the Soviet Union. Most of the survivors left again for Białystok and Łódz, eventually leaving Poland. Societies of emigrants from Zambrów were established in the United States, Argentina, France and Israel. A memorial book, ”Sefer Zambrow", in Hebrew and Yiddish with an English summary, was published in 1963.

Andrzej Zawistowski

 

Bioliography:

The Book of Zambrov, ed. Yom-Tov Lewinsky, Tel Aviv 1963.

Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 16, Jerusalem 1971, s. 923.

Józef Stanisław Mroczek, Zambrów. Zarys dziejów, Białystok 1982.

Tomasz Wizniewski, Dzieje Gminy Zydowskiej w Zambrowie, "Wiadomozci Zambrowskie", 1991, nr 5/6, s. 3-7

Andrzej M. Zawistowski, Zagłada, "Wiadomozi Zambrowskie", 1996, nr 2 (38), s. 19.

 


**Zambrów 1930s**
 

A Market Day
cir 1930s

Market Day
cir 1930s

Marketplace on
Saturday afternoon
cir 1930s

A spot in the
marketplace
cir 1930s

Germans in  Zambrów
Sept 1939

 Zambrów during WWII
1939

Bridge on Jablonka River

Rynek (Town Square)

ul. Wodna

ul. Kosciuszki

 Zambrów
1935

Entrance to Officers
Cadets of Infantry
Reserve School
cir 1930s

Monument to
1863 Uprising
cir 1930s

 Zambrów synagogue

Entrance to
synagogue
 
**Visions of Zambrów 1985**
 




 

 

Copyright © 2006-9 Museum of Family History. All rights reserved. Image Use Policy