WRONKI

WRONKI (Ger. Wronke; in Jewish sources: Vronik), town in Poznan province, western Poland. The Jewish community of Wronki was first organized in the early 17th century. In 1607 permission was granted to build a synagogue, and in 1633 a royal privilege confirmed the rights of the Jews in the town. They engaged in wholesale trade and crafts; toward the end of the 17th century they participated in the leipzig fair. At that time representatives from Wronki served in important posts on the council of the Lands. In 1765 the poll-taxpaying Jews of Wronki and surrounding villages numbered 483. Their occupations included tailoring, goldsmithery, and weaving. The debts of the community then reached the enormous sum of 200,000 zlotys. From 1793 up to 1918 the town was under Prussian rule. In 1808 there were 543 Jews in Wronki (32% of the total population); 791 (35%) in 1840; 604 (24%) in 1871; 528 (12%) in 1895; 380 (8%) in 1905; 314 (6.5%) in 1910 and 187 (4%) in 1921. In the 1860s the local Jews started to move westward to Berlin and other large German cities. When the city was annexed to Poland in 1918 the Jewish population continued to dwindle. (Shimshon Leib Kirshenboim) -Holocaust Period On the outbreak of World War II Wronki had 31 Jews. On Nov. 7, 1939, all the Jews were deported to the Generalgouvernement via Buk, in Nowy Tomysl county. In the small town of Buk about 1,300 Jews from many other places in the districts of Poznan (Posen) and Inowroclaw (Hohensalza) were concentrated, and sent a month later to the Mlyniewo camp near Grodzisk Poznanski (Suedhof). From there they were sent on to Sochaczew-Blonie county in the Warsaw District, where they were allowed to disperse among the small towns of the region. (Danuta Dombrowska) -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Halpern, Pinkas, index; A. Heppner and J. Herzberg, Aus Vergangenheit und Gegenwart der Juden… in den Posener Landen (1909), index; I. Schiper, Dzieje handlu żydowskiego na ziemiach polskich (1937), index; B. Wasiutyński, Ludność żydowska w Polsce w wiekach XIX i XX (1930), 167.