Jasna Góra Monastery

A Rare Newspaper and the Fragile Life of Częstochowa’s Jews

Before the Second World War, Częstochowa’s Jewish community was thriving — nearly 40,000 people, about one-third of the city’s population. They played a central role in the city’s commerce, industry, and culture. Today, fewer than 100 remain.

The World Society of Częstochowa Jews and Their Descendants works to preserve this history. One of their recent projects was translating a rare 1936 Jewish newspaper from Częstochowa — a fragile time capsule of life before the German invasion.

Częstochowa, in southern Poland, is perhaps best known for the Pauline Monastery of Jasna Góra, home to the Black Madonna painting and a major pilgrimage site. But for my father, Abram Enzel, the city holds far more personal memories. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Częstochowa’s Jews were forced into a ghetto and later deported to the Treblinka death camp. About 5,200 survived by working in HASAG, a forced labor camp on the city’s outskirts. My father was one of them.

Read more

Walking Where My Father Walked

In May 2025, I visited Częstochowa, Poland — the city where my father once walked as a young man before World War II. He was born in Kamyk, a small village nearby, into a Jewish family of modest means. His father, like many Jewish men in Kamyk at the time, was a butcher. Before the war, my father would travel to Częstochowa to sell souvenirs of the Black Madonna to pilgrims visiting the Jasna Góra Monastery.

The Black Madonna of Częstochowa, Poland’s most venerated icon, enshrined at Jasna Góra.

Over 80 years later, I walked those same streets with my camera. Much has changed, and much has not.

The crowds still come. At Jasna Góra, I watched as worshipers kneeled, prayed, and wiped away tears in front of the Black Madonna — a 14th-century icon believed by many to have miraculous powers.

No photograph can truly capture the intensity of devotion in that room — but I tried.

Pilgrims at Jasna Góra kneel in reverence before the Black Madonna.

But just outside the monastery’s walls, the contrast is striking.

A fenced lot in Częstochowa under stormy skies. The past is never far.

I don’t know exactly where my father stood. But I walked where he walked — on some of the same cobblestones, past buildings he might have passed and beneath the same sky.

This visit was more than just a return to a place. It was a return to memory, to family, and to a world that war tried to erase.