The exhibition shows the life of the town up to 1939. The photographs come from the collection gathered for several years by Michael and Laura Kaplan Silver, grandchildren of Zalman Kaplan, a photographer from Szczuczyn. The majority of them were taken in the studio of Zalman Kaplan in Szczuczyn.
Jews lived in Szczuczyn from the founding of the town in 1690. In the 18th century they constituted almost a third, and on the eve of the Second World War, half of the 5700 inhabitants of the town were Jewish.
On 7th September 1939 the German Army took over Szczuczyn. On 27th September, on the basis of Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the town was taken over by the Soviet army. The Germans invaded the town again on 24th July 1941. Three days later the Polish population carried out a pogrom against the town’s Jews. 300 people were killed.
In July 1941 the Nazis created a ghetto located at Krzywa street. On 2nd November 1942 those still alive were deported to death camps.
Today’s Szczuczyn is a town with 3700 inhabitants in the Grajewo district. The memory of the Jewish inhabitants of the town is kept by their children and grandchildren scattered around the world. They gather photographs and documents and continue the effort to save the history of their forefathers and their town from oblivion.