ZYRARDOW

ZYRARDOW (Pol. Ẓyrardów), city in Warszawa province, E. central Poland. Jews began to settle there in the 1840s. There were 2,310 Jews (23% of the total population) living in Zyrardow in 1897, most of whom were employed as workers and clerks in the local textile factories, while others engaged in small trade, crafts, tailoring, building, carpentry, transport, and mechanics. The Jewish population numbered 2,547 (12% of the total) in 1921, and 2,726 in 1931. -Holocaust Period At the outbreak of World War II there were about 3,000 Jews in the city. The German army entered the town on Sept. 8, 1939, and immediately began to terrorize the Jewish population, including public executions. During 1940 about 1,000 Jews from other places in Poland were forced to settle there. In February 1941 the entire Jewish population of Zyrardow was made to leave the city. Most of them went to Warsaw and shared the plight of Warsaw Jewry. The community was not reconstituted after the war. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: B. Wasiutyński, Ludność żydowska w Polsce w wiekach XIX i XX (1930), 20; S. Bronsztejn, Ludność żydowska w Polsce w okresie miedzywojennym (1963), 278; S. Kalabiński (ed.), Carat i klasy posiadające w walce z rewolucją 1905 – 1907 w Królestwie Polskim (1956), index; T. Brustin-Bernstein, in: Bleter far Geshikhte, 4:2 (1951), table 6. (Stefan Krakowski)