Rozprza (Rosprza / Rospesha) Jewish Genealogy [21,297 records]

Where Rozprza (Rosprza / Rospesha) (in black) sits among CRARG’s core towns. Click a town to open its page.

Alta Ruchla (Grynbaum) Szpira & Majer Szpira (source: CRARG Gideon Carmi, Kibbutz Mahanayim, Israel)

The small town of Rozprza (also spelled “Rosprza” in early records) had a population that never exceeded 1,000 Jews. A synagogue was built in Rozprza in 1769, burned in 1884, and then was rebuilt in 1898. A major cholera outbreak affected the town in 1932. On Oct. 13, 1942, the Nazis took 800 Jews to the Piotrków ghetto, and few days the population of the ghetto was sent to Treblinka.

Rozprza (Rospesha) Jewish Family Stories

Irving Cymberknopf, Thornhill, Ontario: There is much to tell about me and Rozprza. I was born in Piotrkow. My father had 7 siblings, 2 of them sisters. My grandfather Chazkel was dealing with the farmers around Rozprza. The main income in Rozprza was wheat and dealing in farm products. But there were some tanners, as I remember my father’s big stories. My grandfather was also a marshalek, but not professionally. Perhaps you don’t know what a marshalek was? Well, a man with many talents. Like singing, dancing, poetry on the spot, called in Yiddish “gramin” and in one word entertaining. Marsheliks were hired for weddings who could afford. My grandfather lived in a small house. I used to visit him in the summer. The house had a earth floor with very clear yellow sand., 2 rooms. My grandmother used to cry for 4 children that died or were lost at birth. There are many Cymberknopf in Israel. Some changed to Zim and very few remained by this very long name that in this country is hard to live with. The towns of Radomsk, Tuszin, and Belchatow had Cymberknops. I believe Rozprza was the source of the main place from where the name Cymberknopf originated.

Jewish Names in Rozprza (Rospesha)

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