Kazimierz Dolny nad Wisłą (the full name, Lower Casimir on the Vistula, differentiates the settlement from the historically Jewish district of Krakow, also named Kazimierz) is a picturesque ancient town in East-Central Poland. Known to its Jewish inhabitants as Kuzmir (קאזמיר), the town was home to a large Jewish population for hundreds of years until the Jewish inhabitants of Kuzmir were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust

In the years before World War II, Kazimierz stood out in several ways from other similar Polish towns with large Jewish populations. First, the combination of architectural and natural beauty that characterized the town had attracted artists since the nineteenth century. Second, by the turn of the twentieth century, Kazimierz was mythologized as a representation of an idyllic Jewish-Polish past. Although the founder and patron of this town was Prince Casimir II the Just, Kazimierz was routinely associated with the fourteenth-century benefactor of the Jews, King Casimir III the Great, and his fabled Jewish mistress Esterka. Third, during its artistic heyday, Kazimierz provided an exceptionally successful collaborative space for the Jewish and gentile artists who worked there. Perhaps it was the mythical quality of Kazimierz that enticed artists, whether their background was Jewish or Christian. In his 1939 essay “The Town of Our Dreams,” the Polish-Jewish writer Anatole Stern remarked: “I know people who habitually eat breakfast in Warsaw, lunch in London, and dinner in Paris. But at night they always return to Kazimierz, because it is the town of their dreams.”

Jews were integral to the landscape of Kazimierz. They were also an active force in shaping that landscape. The Yiddish writer Samuel L. Shneiderman, a native of Kazimierz and the author of Ven di Visel hot geredt Yiddish (When the Vistula Spoke Yiddish), remarked that “Jews changed the architectural image of the town through attaching wooden balconies to the half-destroyed stone walls of the houses and adding steep and winding staircases to rooms that were situated one above another, nestlike. Under the Gothic archways the Jews had the little shops (…). Later on, from these makeshift extensions developed a certain Romantic style that harmoniously matched the surrounding landscape.” For the architect Karol Siciński, Kazimierz was a place where “the Slavic soul and the ghetto shook hands, creating a rare example of an architecture: fantastic and picturesque, full of natural grace and enchantment.”

Already in the earliest Romantic images representing Kazimierz, Jews are an integral part of the artistic cityscape. One such example is found in Joseph Richter’s 1830 sepia drawing of the market square. With time, Jews became increasingly common as a subject of artistic scenes from Kazimierz. Artists’ journeys to Kazimierz also presented opportunities for interaction with the local Jews. For example, several artists mention staying at the inn of Lipa Rabinowicz, which in the 1850s offered very basic accommodations, according to the recollections of the painter Wojciech Gerson, but by the 1880s the painter and architect Michał Elwiro Andriolli praised its cleanliness and hospitality.

During the 1920s, when artists started to arrive in Kazimierz in large numbers, they found the Jewish inhabitants of the town to be friendly towards them, although the traditional Jews of Kazimierz typically avoided posing for paintings. On the other hand, the Jews liked to help artists in their day-to-day challenges, for instance by assisting them in finding affordable accommodations. Some of the associations were especially close. For instance, Shulim Nudelman was so strongly linked with Tadeusz Pruszkowski, the professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the leader of the younger generation of artists connected to Kazimierz, that he was known as “Professor Pruszkowski’s Broker.” In fact, he appeared under this name in one of the satirical szopka plays organized by the Academy of Fine Arts. Perhaps Jews were the first to recognize that the artists’ interest in Kazimierz opened other opportunities. Along with the artists, tourists started to arrive in Kazimierz. The town began to undergo a transformation, and it soon became a popular destination for summer vacationers.

Introduction by Halina Goldberg, drawn on material from Waldemar Odorowski, Artistic Colony in Kazimierz Dolny. Centuries 19th -21st (Kazimierz Dolny: Nadwiślańskie Museum in Kazimierz Dolny, 2005).