Gniezno

GNIEZNO (Ger. Gnesen), city in Poland; first capital of Poland and center of the Catholic Church in that country until the beginning of the 14^th century. Jews are mentioned there in 1267. Various charters of privilege granted to individual Jews or the community giving them rights of residence, and permission to organize defense and engage in commerce (1497, 1499, 1519, 1567, 1571, 1637, 1661) were destroyed in fires that periodically devastated the town. From the 13^th to the middle of the 17^th centuries, Gniezno Jewry remained one of the smaller communities in the kingdom, numbering 100 people in 30 houses at the end of the period. A representative from Gniezno participated in the provincial (galil) council of the communities of Great Poland in 1519. Several such councils were convened at Gniezno (in 1580, 1632, 1635, 1640, 1642). Local and visiting merchants and their agents dealt in wool and rags and collected tolls at the biannual fairs, and even attempted to carry on business outside the Jewish quarter (1643). The synagogue, built in 1582, was modeled after the one in Poznan. Eliezer *Ashkenazi was among the rabbis of Gniezno. The events surrounding the Swedish War (1655–59), as well as attacks led by the Jesuits and by the troops of Stephan *Czarniecki, ended with the destruction of the community. In 1661 it reorganized outside the city walls. A new synagogue was built in 1680. In the first half of the 18^th century the community suffered during the Northern War, and there was an outbreak of fire as well as cases of *blood libel (1722, 1738). There were 60 Jews living in Gniezno in 1744. The community increased from the second half of the 18^th century, particularly after Gniezno came under Prussian rule with the second partition of Poland in 1793, growing from 251 in the beginning of the period to 1,783 in the middle of the 19^th century. It had cultural and welfare institutions, craftsmen's associations, a school, and a synagogue. The talmudic scholar Moses Samuel *Zuckermandel officiated as rabbi in Gniezno from 1864 to 1869. Subsequently many Jews emigrated to the German states and from the second half of the 19^th century to America, especially after Gniezno was incorporated within independent Poland in 1919. The community numbered 750 in 1913 and approximately 150 in the 1930s.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.