Little is known about the Jewish community in Kobylanka. Jews were present in the region from the nineteenth century. Around that time, Kobylanka flourished after the discovery of oil in the region. Factories were created for the distillation of crude oil and the production of asphalt. Many of the local Jews were employed at the refineries; others engaged in the trade of linen, furs, wine and produce or worked as carters or peddlers.

Marcus Leuchter, a Holocaust survivor from Kobylanka, recalls that his father worked in an alcohol distillery that was connected to a “huge estate owned by a Polish noble.” It was a large operation with ties to the government and other Jews in Kobylanka likely worked there as well.

Antisemitism increased in the region in the late nineteenth century. The nearby town of Gorlice experienced a pogrom in 1898 and Jewish homes were pillaged and destroyed. After World War I, anti-Jewish boycotts led to financial difficulties for the community.

In October 1941, a ghetto was formed in Gorlice. Conditions were poor and people died both of illness and of sporadic violence committed by the Gestapo.

On August 14, 1942, 700 infirm and elderly Jews, along with Jewish children, were taken from the Gorlice ghetto to a nearby forest and murdered. Hundreds of others who were able to work were sent to Plaszow concentration camp. Over the course of the following year, the remaining Jewish population was deported to Belzec concentration camp. The population was not reconsituted after the war.