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Monument to Jews killed by the Nazis in Szczuczyn, in Jewish Waldheim Cemetery, Forest Park, Illinois. My husband's grandparents and several other relatives were members of this organization. Abraham and Rose Krause (my husband's maternal grandparents) are buried near this monument.
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My husband's maternal grandmother's family, the Monkovskis, came from a small town in Northeast Poland called Stuchin, or Szczuczyn in Polish. After doing some research and obtaining famiily records from Jose Gutstein, of
Szczuczyn.com I found that they actually came from the small village of Wasosz, which is about 3.5 miles south of Stuchin. When they immigrated to Chicago, they formed a landsmanshaftn, a group of people who came from the area around Stuchin, called the Stuchiner Social Society. One of the things that they did was to buy a section in Jewish Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, where they could be buried with people from their home villages. They also raised money for a monument in remembrance of the Jews of Stuchin who were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
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Map of Northeastern Poland, showing the town of Wasosz. It is located northeast of Warsaw, 3.5 miles SE of Szczuczyn, and 45 miles NW of Bialystok, and was the home of many Monkovski ancestors. Today, it has a population of 1600.
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Stuchin was established in May of 1436 by the Polish Prince Wladyslaw.
It became part of Russia as as result of the partitions of Poland during the rule of
the Russian Tsarina, Catherine the Great. In 1897, Stuchin had a
population of about 5000 and a Jewish population of about 3,336, about
66% of the total. After World War II, the Jewish population of Stuchin
was zero. Most of the Jews in the Stuchin area were tradesmen or
merchants. The most common trades were shoe making and tailoring.
Members of the extended Monkowski family included tailors, shoemakers
and glaziers. Others worked as laborers.
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Farms in the
area of Wasosz, Poland |
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| Typical street in Razilow, a town neighboring Wasosz and Stuchin. I included this picture, since I couldn't find any pictures of places of the town of Wasosz. |
My mother's parents and most her family are buried near the Stuchin memorial. They belonged to the Lomza Young Men's Helping society.
ReplyDeletemy family is from wasosz. i used to travel there every summer for about 10 years or so. i want to go back, my parents still go there just about every year. i hope i can make a visit there this summer. I love poland. I might be able to get a whole bunch of information and a TON of pictures if its something you are interested in. My grandmother might have known your family, it was a tiny village.
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