Kazimierz Dolny

Kazimierz Dolny
Kazimierz Dolny - market square
Flag Coat of arms
Kazimierz Dolny
Coordinates: 51°19′20″N 21°56′51″E
Country	Poland
Voivodeship	Lublin
County	Puławy
Gmina	Kazimierz Dolny
Government
• Mayor	Grzegorz Janusz Dunia
Area
• Total	30.44 km2 (11.8 sq mi)
Population (2006)
• Total	3,572
• Density	117.3/km2 (303.9/sq mi)
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Postal code	24-120
Car plates	LPU
Website	http://www.kazimierzdolny.bip.net.pl/

Kazimierz Dolny [kaˈʑimjɛʂ ˈdɔlnɨ] (Yiddish: קאזמיר Kuzmir) is a small town in Central Poland, on the right (eastern) bank of the Vistula river in Puławy County, Lublin Province.

It is a considerable tourist attraction as one of the most beautifully situated little towns in Poland. It enjoyed its greatest prosperity in the 16th and the first half of the 17th century, due to the trade in grain conducted along the Vistula. It became an economic backwater after that trade declined, and this freeze in economic development enabled the town to preserve its Renaissance urban plan and appearance. Since the 19th century it has become a popular holiday destination, attracting artists and summer residents.

Kazimierz Dolny is an art center in Poland. Many painters retreat to this small town to paint and sell their work. Galleries can be found in almost every street, offering for sale sculptures, stained-glass, and fine-art paintings. In the market, folk art is for sale at unbeatable prices

Jewish life

A small Jewish community was present in the city from the time of Casimir III the Great in the 14th century. The king granted the Jews a writ of rights which caused the town to become a focal point for Jewish immigration.

When John III Sobieski became King in 1674, he granted the Jews of Poland a respite from taxes. Sobieski also reconfirmed for the Jews all the rights they had been granted by previous kings. During his reign, the housing restrictions were abolished and the Jewish community began to flourish again.

In the 19th century, Yehezkel Taub, a disciple of the "Seer of Lublin", founded the Hasidic dynasty of Kuzmir in the town.

Between the First and Second World Wars, the Jewish population was about 1,400, half the total population of the town. During the Holocaust era, a Judenrat was established in the town, where the Nazi Germans forced the town's Jews to perform forced labor and to pave roads using tombstones from the local Jewish cemetery. After the Holocaust, a memorial wall was erected using the pieces that survived. In 1940, the Nazis established a ghetto, bringing all the Jews from the surrounding Puławy County to live in the ghetto. In 1942, the Jews that survived the starvation, disease and slave labor were taken to Belzec to be "exterminated". At the end of 1942, the town was officially declared "free of Jews".

One of the most famous Jewish residents of the town was the painter and sculptor Chaim Goldberg. Another was the noted journalist S. L. Shneiderman, who wrote about Kazimierz Dolny in his book The River Remembers.

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  Market square

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  Tenement-house under St. Nicholas (left hand side) and st. Christoper

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  Market square and parish church

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  Parish church

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  Castle

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  Old granary

External links

• Information from About.com: Eastern Europe Travel
• Picture of the Holocaust memorial wall
• Pictures of the town from the site of Yad Vashem, the Jewish Holocaust memorial organization
• Home page for noted journalist, S. L. Shneiderman