Alternate names: Frampol [Pol, Yid], Franpol, Russian: Фрамполь. פראמפאל-Yiddish. 50°41' N, 22°40' E, 40 miles S of Lublin, 9 miles N of Biłgoraj. 1900 Jewish population: about 1000. Frampol is a town in Poland in Lublin Voivodeship in Biłgoraj County with 1,440 inhabitants in 2004. Founded in 1705 with a uniquely symmetrical layout of streets in the shape of concentric rectangles around a large central square. Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland: Jewish Frampolu was created in the early eighteenth century. Frampolski kahał initially was subject to the municipality in Chelm and from 1731, the municipality of Zamość. The synagogue was built in 1760. In 1764, 125 Jews were there. Their number gradually increased. Jewish population: 1827-207 and 1878-1,189. For many years, Jews represented half of the city's inhabitants. 1921 Census: 1,465 Jews (54%) involved trade and tailoring. Some were involved in spinning cotton and other cloth. Isaac Bashevis Singer in "Tales of the Three Demands" described Frampol: "It had everything in it, that should be in every city: the synagogue, housewifery, home, rabbi, and several hundred residents. Every Thursday was the day of the Frampolu market; and peasants from villages came to sell corn, potatoes, chickens, calves, honey, and buy salt, oil, shoes and everything needed by a man." During WWII, 90% of the town's buildings were destroyed in a Luftwaffe raid on September 13, 1939. During German occupation, the town's significant Jewish community perished. The town never fully recovered, the current population less than half that before the war. [April 2009]
Yizkors:
- Pinkas ha-kehilot; entsiklopediya shel ha-yishuvim le-min hivasdam ve-ad le-aher shoat milhemet ha-olam ha-sheniya: Poland vol. 7: Kielce and Lublin
(Jerusalem, 1999) - Sefer Frampol
(Tel Aviv, 1966) - Memorial book
(Montreal, 1997)
CEMETERY:
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"In very few places we can count [on] positive co-operation concerning both the protection of the heritage and the accomplishment of our right to regain the properties of pre-war Jewish communities. It happens that the regulations are on purpose interpreted in a very restrictive way. That was the case when Foundation [The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland], together with the town and district authorities of Frampol, had applied to the Council of Memory of Fight and Martyrdom for financial support for fencing mass graves at the Frampol Jewish cemetery. The Council refused our request because the mass graves are located on a religious cemetery, and religious cemeteries are not within the Council's jurisdiction. An interesting thing is that the Jewish cemetery in Frampol is in fact the property of the State Treasury." Dozens of gravestones among the grasses give traces of the past. Many were stolen for various purposes by local people. No stone survived from the cemetery fence. According to an inventory carried out by well-known researcher of Jewish Lublin, Professor Andrzeja, the oldest preserved tombstone comes from 1735-1736. The gravestones, unique to this area, are naive ornamentation of simplified rosette motifs, palms, and braids. students from the Schools Podstawowej in Frampol take care of the cemetery. [April 2009]
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In April, Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, visited a Jewish cemetery in Frampol, Poland, which was one of the 70 worked on by ESJF. The project was carried out with help from a local school, "which was totally recruited for this project, and introduced students for the first time to the fact that there existed a Jewish community there 70 years ago," Beilin said. Source [June 2016]
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[UPDATE] Rededication of Jewish Cemetery [October 2015]
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[UPDATE] Council of Europe Chief visit to Cemetery [April 2016]
MASS GRAVES:
- In the book A Dream Fulfilled about the commemoration of the Tarnogrod burial site, I wrote: "We boarded the buses for a quick last ride through the town, and the drive back to Warsaw. One stop was made en route, at the cemetery in Frampol. There we saw three graves surrounded by a simple chain fence. On one tombstone was written that 110 Jews were buried there, on the second, 200 and on the third, 300." Source: Sheldon Schorer, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Fax: (972-9) 7713593; Phone: (972-9) 7741648 [date?]
- The mass executions were in November 1942. [May 2009]
- Jewish history of the town. "In 1936 windows of Jewish houses were often smashed. In the winter of 1936-37 Christian pickets barred the way to Jewish shops. In 1938 there were violent riots - a mob attacked Jewish shops and booths and ruffians beat up any Jew they happened to come across. Some 40 Jews were injured. The uproar continued and the Jewish cemetery was desecrated, its fence torn down, many gravestones were broken, and some graves even dug up. In January 1942 the first murders of Jews and Poles took place. A unit of the Gestapo arrived in F to root out persons who had not fulfilled the task of providing food for the army units in the area. Some Polish farmers and Jewish families were seized and killed. ... In August 1942 the Judenrat was ordered to prepare a list of 1,200 Jewish inhabitants of Frampol and neighbouring townships, allegedly with a view to sending them to labour camps in Ukraine. The Judenrat had already heard rumours of deportations to extermination in various parts of the Lublin area, and the Jews were therefore advised to flee or go into hiding. When the Germans arrived in Frampol, they found it almost empty of Jews, and two of the members of the Judenrat explained that the Jews had fled. The Jews ... hid in neighbouring villages and did not return to their homes. Some sought refuge in the woods. Six Jews who were discovered were at once killed by the Germans. Many of the Jews of Frampol, who fled from the town in the summer of 1942, reached nearby Goraj and hid there. However, in October 1942 the Germans burnt the houses of the Jews of Goraj, and they were expelled to F. The last deportation from Frampol took place in November 1942. The Jews of Goraj and Frampol were assembled in the market place and marched 22 kilometres to the railway station at Zwierzyniec. At the station they were divided into two groups: some scores of young people were sent to the concentration camp at Majdanek, while the remainder of the deportees were put into wagons and transported to extermination at Belzec." [April 2009]