Jakub Egit

Who is Jakub Egit?

Jakub Egit was a Polish Jewish leader. He was born in Boryslaw, Poland. His older brother Marek, after whom his son is named, perished in the Flossenburg concentration camp January 1, 1945 on what is known as "the death march."

In 1945, Egit began a project to create a settlement of 50,000 Jews in the town of Dzierżoniów, a Recovered Territory near Wrocław in Silesia, People's Republic of Poland. Egit's motivation was to "exact retribution and justice by making the former German territory a Jewish settlement". Initially, with Soviet Communist support, Egit's plan went well; starting with a small group of concentration camp survivors, the settlement grew to encompass Jewish schools, hospitals, kibbutzim, orphanages and a book publisher in Wrocław. However, in 1948 the Communists withdrew their support. Egit was put in jail and the majority of Dzierżoniów's citizens subsequently emigrated to Israel.

From his release in 1950, Egit was editor of J'idysz Buch in Warsaw. In 1957 he emigrated to Canada, where he became a prominent member of Canada's Jewish community. In 1991, he published his autobiography Grand Illusion.