Dukla was a “shtetl “(the Yiddish word for a small town) located in present-day southern Poland, about 180 km. (110 miles) southeast of Krakow.

There was a Jewish community in Dukla going back to the 1600s. During the 1800s Dukla’s Jewish community experienced significant growth, and by the end of that century the Jewish community comprised a large majority of Dukla’s population. In 1900, over 2500 Jews lived in Dukla, equaling almost 80% of the town's population.

During World War I, Dukla (then located in Galicia, the northern most province of Austria-Hungary) was captured in December 1914 and occupied by the Imperial Russian Army until May 1915. The end of World War I saw the town largely destroyed by damage from battles and fire. However, now a part of the reestablished nation of Poland, Dukla was rebuilt and between the World Wars its total population grew to almost 4000, 64% of whom were Jewish. Relations between Dukla's Jewish and non-Jewish (ethnic “Polish”) communities were historically always good.

 
During World War II, German troops occupied Dukla on September 8, 1939, and the new Nazi administration of the town immediately began its oppression of Dukla’s Jews. In 1940, the Germans established a "Judenrat" (Jewish Council) in Dukla that was required to supply daily Jewish forced-labor details, gather money from the Jewish community to pay imposed fines, and supervise the surrender of Jewish valuables. In the spring of 1942, a closed ghetto was established in Dukla.

 
During summer 1942, Nazi Germany systematically annihilated the Jewish communities of southern Poland.  Dukla's Jewish community was destroyed on August 13, 1942. After being ordered to assemble, Dukla's Jews were divided into three groups. First, Dukla's Jewish intelligentsia, along with the town's sick and disabled Jews – about 300 persons in all – were taken about 12 km. (7 miles) south to the Barwinek woods in Tylawa, Poland, where they were shot and thrown into a prepared pit. 
Next, all Jewish men over age 35, all Jewish women, and all Jewish children under age 15 – about 2000 souls in all – were taken to the train station near Iwonicz, Poland. There they were placed in sealed freight train boxcars, and sent to the Bełżec death camp where they were all gassed upon arrival.

 
Dukla's remaining 300 or so Jewish men, ages 15 to 35, were formed into two work camps established at Dukla, from which they were forced to work either rebuilding a local road or toiling in a nearby stone-quarry. Both groups of workers were mercilessly exploited, with guards killing anyone that did not keep up the pace. Only about 50 Dukla Jews caught in the Holocaust survived the war.

 
Later in the War, in 1944, the Battle of the Dukla Pass between German and Soviet troops took place nearby. As a result of that battle, ninety percent of Dukla was left in ruins. Following the end of the War, 14 Jewish survivors returned to Dukla. However, as Dukla was then largely decimated, most eventually moved to elsewhere. After 1947, there were no Jews left in Dukla.

 
Present-Day Physical Remnants of the Dukla Jewish Community – Dukla had a brick synagogue on Cergowska Street, in the eastern part of town, built in 1758 when an earlier wooden synagogue burnt down. The brick synagogue’s main room had a square floor plan of 12 x 16 meters, with the bimah (alter platform) in the center between four brick columns. A gallery for women was on the north side. By the end of WWII, the synagogue was left in ruins; burnt by the Germans in 1940, and further damaged by German-Soviet fighting in 1944. Today, only the deteriorating walls of the main room with its ornamental entrance on the west side remain. Inside, the niche for the aron ha-kodesh (where the Torah scroll were kept) on the east wall, and fragments of prayer inscriptions on the south wall, can still be seen. The ruined remains of the bimah present at the War’s end, have now disappeared.

Dukla has two Jewish cemeteries – the so-called “Old Cemetery,” which contains about 100 gravestones, most broken and moss covered; and immediately behind it the so-called “New Cemetery,” established around 1870, which has approximately 200 preserved gravestones. During WWII, the Nazis used many of the cemeteries’ gravestones to reinforce the embankments of the nearly Smereczna stream, and for other building works. Some of these desecrated gravestones have recently been unearthed returned to the Dukla cemeteries.

 
A memorial to Dukla’s Jews has been created and placed at the cemeteries’ entrance.   (The memorial was created in August 2012 to mark the 70th anniversary of the destruction of Dukla’s Jewish community.)