Opoczno (Opotchna) Jewish Genealogy [27,305 records]

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

The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust)

Jews were living in Opoczno as early as 1646, but Jews were banned from living in the town in 1714. By 1765, Opoczno included many workshops owned by Jews, including cobblers and saddle makers, and the population was well over 1,000. In the 1800s, the Jewish community “stood at the point of the rapid spread of Hasidism” (Pinkas Hakehillot Polin) and by the end of the century well over 3,000 Jews lived in Opoczno, constituting nearly a third of the total population. Germany soldiers entered Opoczno on Sept. 7, 1939 and a Jewish ghetto was set up in late 1940. The liquidation of the Ghetto occurred in late Oct., 1942, and most Jews were deported to Treblinka.

Jewish Names in Opoczno (Opotchna)

The long list below shows the most common surnames (and patronymic names) in CRARG’s projects that include Opoczno, 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 Opoczno (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).