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Leczna
Yiddish: Lenchna; it is a district seat in the Lublin voivodship, which has approximately 21,800 inhabitants. It is situated at the edge of the Łęczna-Włodawa plain and Świdnik plateau, on the Wieprz river.
Worth seeing
Łęczna has an interesting town layout with three squares; a late Renaissance church (1618-31); a synagogue dating back to 1648; and a nineteenth century cloth hall and wooden houses with arcades.
Brief history
The earliest settlement dares back to the fourteenth century, and the town itself was established in 1467. It was granted its town privileges by the Kraków castellan J. Tarnowski, who built a castle here. The town's heyday was the sixteenth century when it was one of the most important Polish centers for the trade in horses and cattle. At that time, the town was host to numerous markets and trade flourished. The numerous wars of the seventeenth century devastated Łęczna, just as they did the entire country. With the collapse of the Commonwealth, Łęczna was at first included the Austrian Partition (1795), then beginning in 1809 in the Duchy of Warsaw, and from 1815 in the Russian Partition, which was known as the Kingdom of Poland. Having been destroyed first by the Partitions, then by the world wars, and also by the loss of over half of its residents in the Holocaust, Łęczna never managed to recover, despite attempts after 1945 to develop industry there.
The Jews of Łęczna
The first Jews appeared in Łęczna in the early sixteenth century, and in time established a religious Community there. They settled primarily in the northern part of the town. In 1648, they built the synagogue which exists to this day. During the years 1668-1685, the Jewish Sejm of Four Lands convened in Łęczna (Vaad Arba Aracot). The number of Jews living in Łęczna grew steadily. In 1827, Jews made up sixty per cent of the town's residents, or a total of 1,506. They were mainly involved in horse- and cattle-trading, leaseholds and tavern-keeping.
In the nineteenth century, Łęczna became a center for the Hasidic movement, focused on the court of the tsaddik Szlomo Jehuda Lejb Leczner.
The Synagogue, photo: A.Olej&K. Kobus:
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Łęczna belonged to the great Jewish financier and industrialist Jan Gotlib Bloch (1836-1902).
During the interwar period, about 2,300 Jews lived in Łęczna (1939), who comprised 53% of its total population.
After the Germans invaded, a ghetto was created in Łęczna, as well as a slave labor camp to which local Jews were sent, as well as those from the Czech lands and Slovakia. The Nazis liquidated the ghetto in late October and early November 1942. They shot one thousand Jews on the spot, and sent two large transports to the death camp at Sobibór. The rest (about two hundred people) were sent to slave labor camps in Piaski and Trawniki.
Traces
The area of the former kirkut (cemetery), devastated by the Second World War, still survives. The Nazis reinforced the road using Jewish tombstones. In the cemetery itself not even one remains.
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A late Renaissance synagogue is located on ul.Bóżnicza, near the second square. Built in 1648, it was later damaged by fire in 1846. Heavily damaged by the Germans, it was used for storage during the Second World War. After the war, it fell into ruin. It was originally slated for demolition, but was instead rebuilt during the years 1953-1964, and then served as the Museum of the Lublin Coal Region. It now houses the Judaic Museum, which has an extensive collection of Judaica, including liturgical objects, clothing and everyday items, among which is a unique example of Jewish woman�s costume from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski.
The bima, photo: A.Olej&K. Kobus:
The synagogue was built in the Renaissance style, in a rectangular shape, fifteen meters long. Later changes gave the synagogue a Baroque style. The building has massive walls whose thickness reaches as much as 2.4 meters, and has recessed arcades in which there are windows whose tops are rounded. The building's eastern corners are supported by sloped buttresses. The synagogue has a mansard roof covered with shingles. Its western side has no historical details, since it was added on where a destroyed vestibule had once stood. The prayer room houses the Aron ha-Kodesh and the bimah; late Renaissance Stucco decorations have also survived. The bimah is very unusual: it has a two-level superstructure, supported on four columns, which originally supported a dome. At the same time, it functioned as a canopy over the pulpit from which the Torah was read. A memorial plaque to the 1,046 Jews killed by the Germans has been incorporated into the southern wall.
On the second square (Rynek II), several buildings of the former Jewish quarter have survived. Some still have the small indentations on the right side of their exterior door frames that once held the mezuzot.
Beth ha-midrash, photo: A.Olej&K. Kobus:
The small synagogue was built in the early nineteenth century and burned during the fires of 1816 and 1881. The synagogue has a rectangular layout; its outside walls are decorated with moldings. The synagogue originally had a saddle roof, covered with sheet iron. The only thing that survived is a stone wash basin for ritual washing. The synagogue was severely damaged by the Germans during the Second World War, and was left unused, unrepaired and unrenovated for several years after the war. In 1950, it was reconstructed and adapted for use as a grouts factory. It was later used as a work cooperative and tailoring shop. In the early 1990's, the building was reconstructed to serve as a public library.
Regional Museum in Łęczna (Muzeum Regionalne w Łęcznej)
ul. Bożniczna 17,
Tel: (+48 81) 752 08 69.
The museum is open daily from 8am-4pm, and on Sunday from 9am-4pm.
You are welcome to discuss about "Leczna"
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