Kleszczele

Kleszczele is a town in Hajnówka County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. King Sigismund I the Old granted it town rights in 1523 and it was a royal town of Poland. Queen consort Bona Sforza founded a Catholic church there in 1544, and in 1578 King Stephen Bathory issued a privilege regarding the salt trade; the townspeople also prospered by growing and selling hops. In the interwar period it lay in Bielsk County in the Bialystok Voivodeship, and in the Second World War it was occupied first by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany until 1944. A small Jewish community lived in the town from the sixteenth century, and a wooden synagogue begun in 1881 after an earlier one burned down was dismantled during the German occupation. The playwright and novelist Peretz Hirschbein, who lived from 1880 to 1948, is listed as a notable resident.