Nowa Brzeźnica (Bzhezhnitsa) Jewish Genealogy [13,847 records]

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

My aunt Zelda Berkensztat and my parents Mordka Berkensztat & Tema (Gliksman) Berkensztat in Nowa Brzeźnica, 1938 (source: CRARG member Gloria Berkenstat Freund, New York, N.Y.)

Ten Jews lived in Brzeźnica (now called Nowa Brzeźnica) in 1793, and nearly 300 by 1857. Before World War II, 150 Jewish families made up 60% of the population. CRARG member Gloria Berkenstat Freund writes: “In the section on Brzeznica that appears in Memorial Book of the Community of Radomsk and Vicinity, a survivor describes the reaction of her Polish neighbors to the expulsion of Brzeznica’s Jews this way [David Goldman, trans.]: ‘I remained as the last Jewish woman in Brzeznica in the month of Nisan (April) 1942… I shall never forgive our Polish neighbors, with whom we lived, played, and studied in school. They stood in the streets, watching our suffering [as we saw our mothers, women and children for the last time], as if it were a festival ceremony. Clapping and laughing, they watched this tragic expulsion of our parents and children, as our women and children were being sent to their death.’”

Jewish Names in Nowa Brzeźnica (Bzhezhnitsa)

The long list below shows the most common surnames (and patronymic names) in CRARG’s projects that include Nowa Brzeźnica, 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 Nowa Brzeźnica (and nearby towns), some data will be in our Holocaust records, but the vast majority will be in our pre‑Holocaust database.

Berkenstat bakery and home in Nowa Brzeźnica (source: CRARG member Gloria Berkenstat Freund, New York, N.Y.)

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).