52°47' N 23°25' E, 108.0 miles ENE of Warszawa. Czyże is a village in Hajnówka County, Podlaskie Voivodeship in NE Poland and the seat of the administrative district called Gmina Czyże about 7 mi NW of Hajnówka and 25 mi SE of the regional capital Białystok. The village has a population of 590. [April 2009]
Also used cemetery at Bielsk Podlaski. Czyżew Osada situated in the pow. Podlasie from 1975-1998 was one of the administrative woj. łomżyńskiego. With the collapse of the Polish state Czyżew was in zaborze Prussian (pow. ostrołęcki płockim) and, after the Congress of Vienna in zaborze Russian (Płocka Government since 1867 on gub. Łomżyńska). As a result of changes in the administrative division of the country in 1939, the district was Czyżew Ostrów Mazowiecka in the region of Bialystok. The oldest reference relating to Czyżew can be found in the "Konrad papers" from 1203 that listed Cysewo as a village. In the second half of the 16th century,the village was named Czyżewo. In 1738, the town received city rights and the right to hold four fairs and one market. A turning point for the city was the iron rail line from St. Petersburg-Warsaw in 1854. Czyżew settlement did not have a privilege of non tolerandis Judaeis, despite the first Jews arriving here only in the 17th century (about 180 Jews). In 1713, the Jews were subject in the Węgrow Jewish community. Jewish population: 1764/1765-303 Jews, 1808-811 (75.5%); 1857-1,441 (97%); 1897 - 1,596 Jews out of 1,785; 1921- 1595 (87%). The first wooden synagogue was built probably in the eighteenth century. Currently, the synagogue is a storage facility in bad condition. On the external east wall are brick decorations in the shape of a tablet of Moses. The Jews played a significant role in economic life in the city and surrounding area. In the second half of the 19th century, a Jewish factory exported to the entire Russian empire. A soap factory belonging to the family Rabinowicz operated during WWI. Most members of the municipality were engaged in handicrafts and trade of textiles, grain and agricultural products, footwear, and leather. Trade on a larger scale in the interwar period consisted of corn, skins, and more. Four mills were owned by Jewish shareholders. A Jewish Ludowy BANK existed. Zionism was prevalent. Anti-Semitism increased as it did in all of Poland in the 1930. On December 15, 1936 attacks on Jews and their shops occurred. On January 7, 1937 anti-Semitic excesses killed one and injured four seriously and ten with lesser injuries. Police arrested 41 people. [May 2009]
MASS GRAVE: WWII began in Czyżewie on September 1, 1939 with the bombardment of the railway stations. On September 10 , 1939, the Germans entered and in October, the Soviet army. In June 1941, the Germans reoccupied. Dr Marian Godlewski from Warsaw, then a resident of Czyżew, wrote: "The Russians put up a monument to Lenin in the market and a Stalin bust in the railway station. From the station to the town was about 1 km. Immediately after the occupation, all the Jews were ordered to break down a monument to Lenin, then go to the station and break down a statue of Stalin, then carry the remains of two memorials to [?], singing songs, holding a Jewish funeral procession of the broken statues to the river." Gestapo units took part in the liquidation of Jews. A large group of Jews were trapped in Mianówek rural retreat, where together with the Zareba Jews were murdered and buried in the ditch (about 5,000 people). Other houses in the ghetto (around present-day ul. Polna) were subjected to the most severe conditions of life in the province Bialystok. Residents of the ghettos were for to do labor building in the city and its surroundings including construction and rehabilitation of rail tracks. On November 2 the ghetto was liquidated and its inhabitants were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp. [May 2009]
CEMETERY: The Jewish community in Czyżewie had at least two cemeteries.
Old Cemetery: Established probably in the early 18th century,with setting the village, Book of Remembrance Czyżewska states that "the testimony of the Jews in Czyżewie were tombstones and memorials in an old cemetery. Czyżewskich speak about hundreds of Jews into the incumbent." In the early 19th century cemetery was 0.4 hectares. In 1820, the area proved too small and was closed. In the interwar period, municipality surrounded the cemetery with a red brick wall. No trace of the cemetery remains. [May 2009]
New Cemetery: To find the new cemetery established in the 1920s, take Zarębska Street (from High Mazowieckiego in a straight line by the main crossroads in the market) to the twisted street named Cicha (second on the left after crossing), then on the right-hand side is the fence of a Catholic cemetery. Just next to the left is the cemetery. During the Second World War the cemetery was devastated,,but in the 1950s gravest.ones still remained Before WWII, a red brick wall surround the site, now destroyed with bones exposed, chocked with trees and dense vegetation, full of tires, broken glass, and beer cans. The 1.3 hectare cemetery is located SE of the village. In the vicinity of cemetery on Zarebski Street in 1860, the Catholic cemetery was significantly smaller. Only two tombstones are visible. One of them shaped like a table [an ohel?] was used for sixty years as a place for illicit drinking and carousing. Overgrown with vegetation in the summer, traces of the cemetery remain.[May 2009]
MASS GRAVE: Jews murdered by the Germans in August 1941 are buried about three km from the Kościelne-Zaręby road in the village of Czyżew Mianówek in an oblong mound with a concrete frame and metal fence. A 1959 granite monument in Polish and Hebrew commemorates the execution: "Here lie the remains in the mass grave of Jews of 5000 men, women and children towns from the towns of Zaręby, Kościelne, Czyżew, Andrzejewa and the surrounding area bestially murdered by the Nazi murderers in autumn 1941, their only crime was that they were Jews. To their memory. " photos. [May 2009]