The history of Jewish life in Chorostkow dates back some 500 years. Until about 1750, Chorostkow remained a quiet shtetl surrounded by many similar little villages. Then Count Sieminski, who owned the land of the village, gave Chorostkow the rights of a town and invited more Jews from the surrounding area to come live there.
Jewish homes tended to be located in the center of town and the Gentiles on farms that fanned out around Chorostkow. The first leader of the Jewish community, Yaakov Feffer, persuaded Count Sieminski to allow Jews to build a synagogue. For nearly two centuries it served the local Jewish community and became the spiritual home for several illustrious rabbis. For nearly 500 years, from the time Columbus began his Atlantic voyages until Hitler invaded Poland, there was a Jewish presence in Chorostkow.
Most Jews in Chorostkow were retailers, innkeepers, artisans, and peddlers who sold their wares in neighboring villages and in return bought produce from local farmers. The artisans included tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, furriers, and blacksmiths, who worked for both Jewish and Gentile clients in town and on the surrounding farms. Farmers would pay with produce and poultry, which could then be sold in town
Chorostkow itself, as noted by some of its survivors in a memorial published in Israel in 1968, did not stand out among other shtetls. It did not have art treasures or cultural institutions to make it famous, yet from its inception, the town held its own among older, more established neighbors. Among Chorostkow's prominent rabbis were Meshulam Rath, author of Kol Mevaser, and Yeshaye Rappaport, a son-in-law of the famous Babad family. Chorostkow too produced a number of personalities who contributed to building the state of Israel: Fishel Werber, Shmuel Epstein, and former Housing Minister Avraham Ofer.
The Jews of Chorostkow tended to be neither rich nor influential, but they did distinguish themselves in two areas: piety and good deeds. The town was spiritually fortunate to have many rabbis who served with distinction and were devoted to their congregants. In addition, some of Chorostkow's Jews belonged to illustrious Hasidic groups: Chortkov, Husiatin, Sadegura, and Kopychince, which were descendants of the Rizhin Hasidim.
There were about eight synagogues in Chorostkow. Although just a shtetl, Chorostkow had Mizrachi synagogues, Hasidic shteeblach (small houses of worship), and Mitnagdim shuls. The largest synagogue was known as Zionist. A number of smaller synagogues were affiliated with the Chortkow All other shuls and shteebels in town were connected with various Hasidic groups, except one synagogue called Yad Charutzim, which was organized exclusively for working men. On Shabbat, everyone, regardless of trade or profession, rested, basking in the peace and beauty of the day. Stores would close early on Friday afternoons, and everyone went home to change into better clothing. Shalom, the shammash (synagogue sexton), stood on a hill by the synagogue and loudly called out over and over, "Time to go to shul."
On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the entire community attended synagogue from early in the morning until late into the evening. At midnight during the days of Elul, , Shalom, the shamash, would walk through town knocking on doors and windows. In a sweet, melodious voice he would sing, "Get up and pray to God." On Selichot night, the community would begin to recite prayers of forgiveness. The sense of repentance and contemplation would build during the month, gaining momentum during the Ten Days of Awe and climaxing on Yom Kippur. People asked selicha (forgiveness from God and one another) throughout this period. Even though we lived among Gentiles and were a small minority in Chorostkow, indeed in Poland generally, Jews followed the cycle of the religious calendar.
Halpern reports on his recent trips to Chorostkow and what a shock it was to see how all the houses had been razed and all "evidence of the five hundred-year-old Jewish presence there had been utterly effaced. Local residents had torn down everything, whether in search of hidden treasure or building materials or deliberately to erase any memory that Jews had once lived peaceably among them. Whatever the reason, it was extremely painful for me to travel through the area and see that absolutely nothing of our Jewish history remained. The entire Jewish center of town reminded me of an ancient archaeological site one might see in Israel, just piles of stones and rubble. There wasn't a breath of life, only an air of long neglect.
"Even the Jewish cemetery had
been destroyed. Although I learned about its destruction during
the war, I was still unnerved to see residential houses sitting
on top of graves. In one of the letters I received from my father
when I was in Kamionka, he had said that he was working in the
Jewish cemetery chopping tombstones to be used in repairing the
highway. He was a firm believer in the resurrection of the dead
and thought it was important to know the names of the individuals
buried there, so he carefully wrote down the names and put them
in a glass bottle that he buried not far from the site. He instructed
me how to locate this bottle, but by the time I got there, thirty
years later, the place had been entirely built over and the bottle
was impossible to find."
Excerpted and adapted from Darkness and Hope by Sam Halpern, NY:
Shengold, 1996, pp.7-10 et passim