Częstochowa (Chenstochov) Jewish Genealogy [429,809 records]

Where Częstochowa (Chenstochov) (in black) sits among CRARG’s core towns. Click a town to open its page.

Postcard back, about 1908 (source: CRARG member Joan Abramson, San Francisco, Calif.)

In 1765, 75 Jews lived in Częstochowa and in 1808, 495. By 1900, the Jewish population had grown to 11,764, which was nearly 30% of the total population. Częstochowa was one of the cultural capitals of Jewish Poland. The German military entered the city on Sunday, Sept. 3, 1939, two days after they had invaded Poland. The next day, now known as “Bloody Monday,” a pogrom took place and many Jews were murdered. “The first three days of Nazi rule over Częstochowa were marked by bloody murder and looting. Jewish economic life was completely paralyzed. Cultural, social, and political life, including the entire school system, was completely dissolved.” (Samuel David Singer, ed., Tshenstokhov: Naye Tsugob-Material tsum Bukh “Tshenstokhover Yidn,” New York: United Relief Committee in New York, 1958; transl.: Mark Froimowitz.)

Tauba Epsztejn Grynbaum (source: CRARG member Leah Jordan Bisel, West Bloomfield, Mich.)

Częstochowa (Chenstochov) Jewish Family Stories

Andrew Nusbaum, San Francisco, California: My mother’s cousin Boleslaw Montag was born and raised in Częstochowa in the 1920s-30s. They had always felt very Polish, attended Polish schools, and spoke Polish at home. An uncle had even been an officer in the Polish army. Boleslaw and his sister Anna were in hiding when the ghetto was liquidated and were taken to the Hasag-Pelcery work camp. While there his sister became ill with typhus. Boleslaw stole an apple so she would have something to eat and was caught and severely beaten by a guard. He was only twenty years old. Out of an extended family of over twenty living in Częstochowa, only Boleslaw, his sister and their ex-officer uncle survived the war. They came back to their homes but found that they had been occupied by Poles during their incarceration. They moved to the nearby town of Katowice and tried to rebuild their lives. The uncle died soon after the war from cancer (possibly caused or exacerbated by working conditions in Hasag). Anna moved to Israel in the mid-1950s and was only allowed to visit the family after the fall of Communism in 1989. Boleslaw, who changed his name to Tadeusz, wanted to leave too but his wife felt that Poland was their home and they should stay. Tadeusz and his family, which now include children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, still live in Poland today.

James W. “Jim,” Chico, California: Sydney (born Zysman Szlamkowicz in Częstochowa, Poland in 1921) is a Holocaust survivor and the last of my grandmother Esther’s family. My grandparents got out of Poland in 1920, but left her three brothers and two sisters and their families behind. “Aunt Esther” was well remembered and helped her family until 1939. After the war she found four survivors; a niece and three nephews. In 1949 three, Abram, Esther, and Moshe, went from DP camps in Europe to Israel, where they married and raised “Sabra” families. They have now passed away. In 1950 Sidney came to the United States and New York City. He tells of the time when he was a courier sneaking in and out of the Częstochowa ghetto. He was shot in the stomach by the Nazis, but was able to get himself back inside the ghetto, where a Jewish doctor operated and saved his life. His second story is about when he was finally caught by the Nazis. He and two other youths were lined up against a wall to be shot, but was saved at the last minute. He was taken to jail then sent to Buchenwald, where he, together with his cousin Abram, survived as skilled labor, doing tailoring and shoemaking, and other work. His third story of survival happened somewhere near Buchenwald where he was slave labor in a steel mill making rails for the railroad. He worked right at the ovens and molten steel dripped on his foot, burning down to the bone. Severely wounded, he knew he would be killed. Instead, the SS Guard got him a Jewish doctor, who said Sidney would need surgery and drugs they did not have. The SS guard took a list from the Jewish doctor and got the supplies and drugs he needed to save Sidney’s foot and life. He cries every time he tells that story and asks why did that SS guard save him, “the boy” as the guard referred to him.

The Koziwoda family in Częstochowa, Poland, 1920 (source: Myrna Cozen, San Francisco Bay Area, Ca.)

Myrna Cozen, San Francisco Bay Area, California: My father, Felix Cozen (born Feliks Koziwoda), was born and raised in Częstochowa, where his parents owned a bakery. He was born in 1903, the youngest of seven children, and was the second son. The family was ultra-orthodox and his father was very strict. My grandfather sent my father to cheder, but my father would run off cheder to attend the Polish public school. From my father’s accounts, his father would retrieve him from the Polish school and put him back into cheder. My impression was that beatings were involved. When he was 14, my father hopped a train and ran away to Paris, to the home of a great aunt. His father came after him and took him home. This story is indirectly corroborated by a cousin who recounts an earlier episode involving her grandmother Regina, my father’s much older sister. Regina ran away to Amsterdam after learning that her father had arranged a marriage for her. My grandfather allegedly chased after his daughter and brought her home again. But soon after, she eloped and left for America. In my father’s case, he grew up to be fervently anti-religious. My father persisted with his secular education and completed gymnasium in Częstochowa. He also pursued some technical training. The story becomes sketchier as he reaches adulthood. I know he spent some time as a young man in Radomsko, the home town of his mother’s family. The Radomsko Yizkor book lists him as a cultural affairs librarian at the local Jewish cultural association. Only after his death in 1972 did I learn that he had married and settled in Sosnowiec. I know little about his life there, other than that he and his wife had a daughter, who was born in 1933. My father survived Auschwitz, Blechhammer, and Buchenwald. He was liberated from Buchenwald by the Americans. His wife and daughter were killed in Auschwitz. My father lived in the DP camps in West Germany for two years after the war, during which time he worked for the newly formed UN Refugee Agency as a census taker. He came to the U.S. in 1947 and settled in Los Angeles, where he met my mother, a refugee from Warsaw.

Zev Newman, New York City:
BEFORE THE WAR Adele Goldblum (originally Zelkowitz) lived in Częstochowa. Her family owned a ceramic pot and tile business, in which the older children worked, including Bubbe. She was the accountant. Oscar Schindler was one of their customers. Her father had bought an empty piece of land and built a factory and their home on it. It was a successful business, and they were well off. Her father was a Dayan in a Beis Din and was well respected. They were Radomsk Hasidim. There were nine siblings: Adele, Moshe, Dora, Leibish-Henach (Leon), Shmuel-Feivel, Liba, Franya, Avraham (Abe), and Itzche (Jack). Bubbe’s parents were Daniel and Reisel-Leah Zelkowitz. Raisel-Leah was born in Klobuck in 1880. Her parents were Wolf-Herszlik (Herschel) Fajga and Mirel (Malka) Frydman. Malka died of pneumonia on Simchat Torah, 1941.
DURING THE WAR In 1939, when Bubbe was in her early 20s, the Germans came and moved the Jews to the Częstochowa Ghetto. The family lost their home and business. After three years in the Ghetto, Bubbe and her siblings were taken to the Hasag Pulcery forced-labor camp. The men and women slept in separate areas; she was with her sisters and Renya, Leon’s wife. In the camp, Bubbie manufactured ammunition for the Germans, and Uncle Jack tested it. Food was scarce—mostly stone soup, which consisted of stones, water, and a few vegetables. They also got dry bread once in a while. Bubbe’s brother, Leon, was able to save his siblings in the Hasag camp because he was the only one who knew how to maintain the machines in the ammunition factory, because he was a machinist and made bicycle hubs before the war. They needed him to run the machines, so he made a bargain with the Nazis that he would continue to run them as long as they didn’t take away his siblings. When the ghetto was liquidated, the elderly people, including Daniel and Reisel-Leah, were shot and buried in a mass grave in Częstochowa’s Jewish cemetery. The Russians liberated Bubbe and her siblings from the labor camp on April 16, 1945. Only five of the nine siblings survived.
AFTER THE WAR Bubbe went to Częstochowa with her siblings to find their old home. A Christian family was living there, and they refused to let Bubbe and her siblings into the house. The home had been sold twice so that it couldn’t be reclaimed; this was a common scheme used by the Poles. The pot factory had been destroyed. They went to their next-door neighbor, who was a gentile, and she took them in. After several weeks, they moved to an apartment in another part of Częstochowa that was subsidized for survivors. Eventually, she went with her siblings to Munich, Germany. There, she opened a Kosher restaurant. She and Zaide came to Chicago in 1951; Bubbe and Jack were the first of the siblings to immigrate. When they got to America, Bubbe worked as a seamstress, and Zaide worked in leather goods.

Salomon Epstein tombstone, Częstochowa Cemetery (source: CRARG member Leah Bisel, West Bloomfield, Mich.)

Jewish Names in Częstochowa (Chenstochov)

The long list below shows the most common surnames (and patronymic names) in CRARG’s projects that include Częstochowa, which is one of our core towns. The number indicates how many times the name appears. Records for persons from this town can also appear in projects for other towns, especially in marriage records and records for non-permanent residents.

For Częstochowa (and nearby towns), some data will be in our Holocaust records, but the vast majority will be in our pre‑Holocaust database.

Historical information on towns is drawn from Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, Israel: Macmillan, 1978), Shmuel Spector, editor-in-chief; The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust (New York: New York University Press, 2001); The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945 (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2018); Pinkas Hakehillot: Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, Poland (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976); and several town Yizkor books. For their help with translating town histories, CRARG thanks Gloria Berkenstat Freund (Yiddish) and Udi Cain (Hebrew).