ZOLYNIA THROUGH THE 18th CENTURY

The local manoral estate was established in the 1330s and the town of Lancut surrounding the main castle was chartered in 1349. Over time gentry allowed smaller communities to develop around their estate. It's not known exactly when the village of Zolynia was established, but it is first mentioned in local records in 1508 and but by the late 1500s there were Poles living there to work the land for the ruling family.

There was a Calvinist church built in Zolynia during the ownership of Stanislaw "Devil" Stadnicki, well-known for his torture of serfs and others who displeased him, and he required the local Poles to adhere to this Protestant denomination. Several years after Stanislaw was captured and beheaded in 1610, the church was struck by lightning. This was taken as a sign from God and the peasants demanded that a Catholic church replace the building. To their relief, the new squire, Wladyslaw Stadnicki, returned to the predominant faith and completed a Catholic church in 1622. He even rebuilt it when it was burned by the invading Tartars in 1624.

At some point, the owners decided to allow Jews to settle in Zolynia, probably to encourage trade and commerce involving the agricultural products produced on estate lands. There were Jews in nearby towns by the mid-16th century (for example, Lezajsk in 1538 and Lancut in 1563) and perhaps this is when the first Jews came to Zolynia. Jews were moving to Poland in large numbers during the 16th century after expulsions from other places in Europe.

According to a 1713 list, Zolynia had dozens of tradesmen, craftsman and small industries, including 45 weavers and a few inns, breweries and grinding mills. Between the years 1701 and 1721, Zolynia was in the path of various Saxon, Swedish, Russian and Northern Polish invaders.

Sometime in the middle of the 18th century, Zolynia was recognized as an official town with a mayor and a town council, and with powers of municipal self government. There were definitely at least a few Jewish families there at that time. The Lancut Jewish community was well-established by then, having their own synagogue by 1726, and in the late 1700s they sponsored the establishment of a Jewish community in Zolynia. This meant that Zolynia Jews would have their own rabbi, would construct a synagogue and cemetery, would from time to time collect taxes and rents for the nobility, and would keep records of Jewish births, deaths and marriages in the town.

In 1781, after Zolynia and the region became part of the Austrian Empire, squire Stanislas Lubomirski required Zolynia Jews to pay sixteen gold pieces as a fee for the right to live and own their own homes in the town. Jews in Zolynia were overwhelmingly engaged in trade and artisan work, and some worked in management positions for the estate (literate and experienced in commerce, Jews were often engaged as rent and tax collectors in rural areas). During the 1790s, Zolynia's Jewish community recruited other Jews to come to the town, sometimes with offers of money and equipment to try their hand at agricultural work (for Jews, this meant distilling and the alcohol trades). A larger Jewish population would bring more commerce, bigger pools for marriage and taxation, and more security. There were several hundred Jews in Zolynia by 1804, when the authorities required the town to produce six Jewish families for resettlement in a new agricultural community.