SOCHACZEW
[After June 1941], Warsaw ghetto, Bernard Kampelmacher.¹⁰⁴¹ Study
“Sochaczew. Cmentarz żydowski” [Sochaczew. Jewish cemetery].
[1] Sochaczew. Jewish cemetery
If you must write about Sochaczew, you can focus almost entirely on the local
cemetery, which is still intact.¹⁰⁴² All that is left of the local Jewish life is one
big cemetery… the houses, recently rebuilt after the Great World War, and the
Jewish workshops, properties, storehouses, appliances, and other wealth – all
that has been burned or destroyed. The ruins of buildings with strong walls
and foundations… everything has been levelled to the ground.
The anti-Jewish mayor, Volksdeutscher Prause¹⁰⁴³ who in the Polish State
worked as a minor secretary of the municipality and pretended to be a Polish
patriot, sitting quietly like a mouse, nowadays he behaves like a mighty lord
and destroys Jewish property. He gives orders to demolish Jewish houses,
which could be rebuilt, claiming that it is an “urban planning” requirement,
1041 Bernard (Beyrish) Kampelmacher (?–1942), born in Galicia, officer of the Austrian army in WWI; after 1918 settled with his family in Sochaczew. From 1928, he was headmaster of an elementary school No. 4 in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. Chairman of the Housing Cooperative, of the Jewish Youth Circles (Żydowskie Koła Młodzieży), and chairman of the Jewish Circle of the Polish Red Cross (Żydowskie Koło Polskiego Czerwonego Krzyża). During WWII, he became a member and briefly chairman of the Judenrat in Grodzisk Mazowiecki (perhaps he replaced Jakubowicz after the latter’s arrest on 10 November 1939), while continuing to work as the elementary school headmaster. He was also the Polish
Red Cross delegate for the Sochaczew-Błonie Region, and the chairman of the ŻSS Delegate Office in Grodzisk Mazowiecki beginning on 18 January 1941. In the Warsaw ghetto, he was chairman of the Grodzisk Mazowiecki Landsmanshaft and an associate of Oyneg Shabes, author of studies on the history of Jews in the Sochaczew County towns, especially in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. He died of typhus in the Warsaw ghetto in early 1942. See Docs. 145–153 and AŻIH, ŻSS, 211/431, p. 13; 211/124, p. 94.
1042 The Jewish cemetery in Sochaczew was established around 1780; destroyed probably in late 1941. The Germans used part of the tombstones to build the airfield in Bielice. The cemetery was partly renovated in 1989–1991.
1043 Julius Prause, Sochaczew mayor during the occupation.
