My family Landscape

In my father's youth, the Landschaft family was already a large family: his mother had nine brothers and sisters, 7 girls and 3 boys.

My father told us that his maternal grandfather had 7 stones to put away!

What my father remembered was that the Landschaft family came from Russia. Their migration to Polish lands must have dated back to the establishment of the Pale of Settlement. Catherine II of Russia forced almost all Jews living in the Russian Empire to relocate to a territory between the Baltic and Black Seas, encompassing Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Moldova.

My Landschaft ancestors settled in a small sthetl Klimontow, a few kilometers from Jedrzejow, in the district of Kielce.

When they had to migrate, the city of Jedrzejow did not admit Jews.

They were able to settle in this small shtetl well before 1862, the year in which Tsar Alexander II imposed major reforms on the Empire: the abolition of serfdom (1861), a major judicial reform, and another

Education was reformed, followed by military service (reduced from 25 to 6 years). It broadened the possibility for Jews to settle outside the Pale of Settlement, and economic and educational restrictions against Jews were lifted. The assassination of the Tsar in 1881 triggered anti-Jewish pogroms throughout Russia. Jews were the designated scapegoats in the face of growing dissent within the empire.

But it does not appear that the Landschaft family was a victim in their little corner of Poland.

My father knew that his family lived in Klimontow.

I also found this name in the story of Sabina, Henri's niece.

I had trouble finding the location of Klimontow, as there are several in Poland: a small village in the province of Lodz, another near Sandomierz (but no reference to Landschaft in these places) and I finally spotted a Klimontow, not far from Jedrzejow, near Sedziszow (28km).

In fact, Klimontow is about 32km from Jedrzejow.

Several Landschaft families lived in Jedrzejow, including Henri's father.

This chart, taken from Jedrzejow's Yiskor Book, shows that the Jewish population settled in the city between 1882 and 1897, when the ban on Jewish residence was lifted. By 1939, they represented one-third of the population.

Apparently my grandmother Perele Landschaft's parents stayed in Klimontow and the young Czalczynski couple came to settle there according to my father.

What I have been able to establish about the family history

I was able to trace the Landschaft ancestors back to the end of the 18th century in the records of Checiny and Wodzislaw. But not at all of them have been indexed on JRI-Poland. I had to contact the "Town Leader" for Kielce district.

My father remembered the first names of his nine uncles and aunts, so I was able to trace their families.

And what astonished my father the most was that a member of each of these families survived the Holocaust. Out of at least 150 people, only about a dozen remained alive.