Monument in memory of the Staszów Jews murdered in the Golejów Forest. Staszów, Poland
After the war, a few community members who had survived returned to Staszów. Some had fought in the ranks of the partisans, while others survived the labor camps or lived in hiding. Those who came back discovered that their possessions had been looted and their homes seized. Furthermore, there were antisemitic incidents in the area, including attacks on returning Holocaust survivors. In time, all the Jews left the town; many went to live in DP camps in Germany.
First memorial assembly held by Staszów survivors in Feldafing, Germany
Survivors from Staszów who had lost their families and homes felt an acute need to belong to an organization commemorating their hometown and the residents who had featured so significantly in their lives. In the DP camps, a committee was established that facilitated commemorative endeavors and assisted in the rehabilitation of the survivors.
Memorial ceremony for the Staszów Jewish community in Tel Aviv, 1950s
The first gathering of the Association of Staszów Survivors in Israel took place in April 1946, in Beit Hahalutzot in Tel Aviv. Staszów survivors and their families came from all over the country to attend. At the gathering it was decided that the association would publish a Yizkor book in memory of the Staszów community, and would raise funds to assist the She'erit Hapleita (surviving remnant). One of the association's missions was to retrieve 14-year-old Fela Heutman, whose parents found a hiding place for her with a Polish family during the last days of the ghetto. She remained there after the war, having no inkling about her Jewish identity.
Each year on 28 Heshvan, the date of the liquidation of the Staszów community, the association would hold a memorial ceremony. The Staszów Yizkor Book, comprising memoirs and articles written by former townspeople, was published in Israel in the 1960s.
Members of the Association of Staszów Survivors in Toronto, Canada, postwar
Associations of Staszów survivors exist in other countries around the world, including Uruguay, Canada and the US. Former Staszów residents who emigrated before World War II established these organizations in order to help Jewish immigrants to acclimatize. After the Holocaust, they worked to commemorate the Staszów community and raised funds to provide immediate relief, both financial and psychological, to Staszów survivors.
The Association of Staszów Survivors is active to this day, erecting gravestones, conducting memorial ceremonies and arranging meetings with local schools in Poland.
Yosef Steinberg (1921-1948) in Kibbutz Yad Mordechai
Eight Staszów-born Holocaust survivors were killed in action in the War of Independence. One of them was Yosef Steinberg.
Yosef Steinberg was born in Staszów to parents Leah and Mordechai. During the war, he was incarcerated in the ghetto with his family, but escaped to the nearby Golejów Forest together with another 1,000 Staszów Jews and joined the partisans. After liberation, he returned to Staszów to discover that his parents and brother Shimon had not survived, and made the decision to immigrate to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) and join his sisters, who lived in Tel Aviv. Posing as a Jewish Brigade soldier, the 24-year-old Yosef immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1945. Upon arrival, he stayed in Tel Aviv for a short time and then joined a group of immigrants settling in Yad Mordechai, where he guarded the fields. He made a point of talking about his Shoah experiences in kibbutzim and other places around the country. In the War of Independence, Yosef fought valiantly to defend the kibbutz from the Egyptian invasion. He fell on the first day of battle in May 1948 and was buried in Yad Mordechai. He was 27 years old.
Ceremony in the Jewish cemetery in Staszów, Poland
In recent years, various local endeavors have been initiated to preserve the heritage of Staszów Jewry. One such initiative is the annual memorial ceremony on 8 November, the date of the liquidation of the ghetto, with the participation of the Mayor of Staszów, local residents, teachers and students. In the course of the ceremony, which takes place in the Jewish cemetery, residents light memorial candles, recite the names of Staszów Jews murdered in the Holocaust and lay flowers and stones in their memory. In addition, an annual day of Jewish culture was declared in Staszów, on which lectures are given, Jewish music is performed and traditional Jewish dishes are served.
Monument to the Jews of Staszów in the Jewish cemetery
"At this ceremony, we seek to commemorate one Polish Jewish town, out of all those destroyed in the Holocaust – not because it is a special, unique example of a Jewish town; on the contrary, because it was not unique, it was a drop in the ocean amongst hundreds and thousands of other Jewish towns, and because one such "drop" represents all or most of them".
David Eidelsberg, Staszów Yizkor Book
