Auschwitz, Before the Nazis

Of all the things and places to give an endearing Jewish name, Auschwitz would seem the most unlikely. Oshpitzin — which comes from the Aramaic word for guest, ushpizin, and is the name of a traditional Sukkot prayer that welcomes guests — was how Jews once referred to Oswiecim, the Polish town that would become the location of the Nazis’ deadliest camp.

Oswiecim, as we learn in a small, new exhibition of photographs at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, was home to a thriving Jewish community from the mid-16th century until the Holocaust. Jewish life in the Polish town flourished from 1867, when Jews in the Habsburg Empire were awarded full religious rights and Galicia became a de facto autonomous region, up until the outbreak of World War II. Estimates show that the Jewish population reached an all-time high in 1939, when the majority of the town’s 14,000 residents, was Jewish.