|
a.
|
Note: Breslau (Breslauer,Bressler) This name is derived from the city of Breslau, Silesia. In 1746 Fredrerick The Great expelled the Jews from Silesia, forcing most of the Jews of Breslau to leave. Later in the 19th century when European governments passed laws forcing all Jews to assume fixed family names, many whose families had come from the city of Breslau assumed this name in memory of their origins.
The Bresler family has members buried at Montefiore Cemetery in the plots of the Gostynin Society on Long Island, NY
Gostynin, Town in central Poland. The Jewish pop. numbered 157 in 1765, 634 in 1856, 1849 in 1897 and 1831 in 1921. There were 2,269 Jews living in Gostynin on the eve of WWII.
Immediately after the German army entered the town, in Sept. 1939 mass arrests and attacks on the Jews began along with requisitioning and looting of Jewish property. Jews were ordered to hew the old wooden synagogue into pieces and carry them to German inhabitants for fuel. The Jews in Gostynin were ordered to pay two "contributions" (fines) in succession. When the president of the community was unable to collect the second sum in time, he sent a delegation to the Warsaw Jewish community (on German suggestion) and received the required amount.
A ghetto was set up in Gostynin which was at first open,but subsequently surrounded by barbed wire. Order was kept by Jewish police. Most of the Jews left the ghetto every morning for hard labor assignments. In Aug. 1941 labor transports of men and women began to be sent to camps in Warthegau. The ghetto was "liquidated" on April 16 &17, 1942, when nearly 2,000 of the Jews there were sent to death the camp at Chelmno.
By the end of the war all traces of Jewish life in the town had been obliterated. The cemetery had been desecrated and destroyed, the tombstones hauled away, and the tomb of the local Tzaddik destroyed. The few Jews from Gostynin who survived the holocaust subsequently emigrated.
This information comes from The Museum of the Jewish Diaspora.
|
