1. Konstantynów - Centrum miejscowości

The earliest surviving mention of Konstantinov (Kozierady) dates back to 1452.In 1729. The owner of the estate of hr. Karol Józef Odrowąż-Siedlnicki, treasurer of the crown, located the town on the site of the village under the Magdeburg Law. He named it Constantine in honor of his wife Constance.Along with the location privilege, the city received the right to hold weekly markets and a fair. Siedlnicki brought in craftsmen and created conditions for Jewish settlement, which greatly accelerated the economic development of the city.In 1744, the Siedlnicki family built a Baroque palace in Konstantynów surrounded by a French-style garden. Since the mid-19th century. The textile industry developed here. At the end of the 19th century. The estate - modernized, industrialized and exemplarily administered by Stanislav Aleksandrowicz - by way of matrimonial colligations passed into the possession of the Plater-Zyberka family.In 1869 Konstantynów lost its municipal rights. A steam mill and a steam distillery - the largest in the Siedlce Governorate at the time - operated on the manor, as well as a water mill, a windmill and a brickyard. After 1944. Konstantinovsk estates were taken over by the state.Jews in Konstantinov - Until 1939. - It is not known exactly when the first Jews appeared in Constantinov. Since 1751. The Diet of Four Lands sat here and there was a yeshiva run by a local rabbi, so it can be assumed that at least from the first half of the 18th century. There was a municipality here. In 1826. There were 35 Jewish merchants, as well as many artisans, including. 17 tailors and six bakers. At the end of the 19th century. Jewish entrepreneurs also ran industrial plants, including. mills and a brewery, and a little later, a sawmill. In the interwar period, Constantinople's Jews had a synagogue, a beit ha-midrash, a mikvah and a Talmud-Torah school. Shortly after World War I, a branch of the General Zionist Party was established, followed by Mizrachi cells, Poale Zion, and in 1925. - A branch of Aguda, under whose auspices since 1932. A Beit Yaakov school for girls functioned. Charitable organizations were active, including. The funeral fraternity Chevra Kadisha, the Gemilut Chesed loan society, the Ezrat Cholim sick care society, and institutions engaged in cultural and educational activities. In 1929. Among other things, the settlement was burned in a fire. Many buildings belonging to Jews.Holocaust - In October 1939. Along with the Red Army, a group of Jews escaped from Konstantinovsk to areas occupied by the Soviet Union. Some of them returned to Konstantynów in the winter of 1940.They were detained by the Gestapo and deported to a concentration camp in Neuengamme near Hamburg. In the summer of 1940. A Judenrat was established in Konstantynów (Mendel Aronowicz became its chairman), and a ghetto was created at the end of that year.Its residents were forcibly employed in nearby labor camps. In May 1942. ca. 100 Jewish men from Konstantynów were sent to the Gross-Rosen camp, September 22, 1942. while more Jews from the ghetto were deported to a ghetto in nearby Biała Podlaska. In October of that year, during the Sukkot holiday, a selection was carried out in the Konstantinov ghetto, after which the elderly, women and children were shot on the spot, while the young and physically fit were sent to labor camps. The others were driven to the transit ghetto in Miedzyrzec Podlaski. From there, on October 17, all Jews from the ghetto, along with Jews from Konstantynów who were in labor camps near Międzyrzec, were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. A dozen young men escaped from the transport.Several of them joined partisan groups fighting in the area, some hid in farms.