HELLER Origin of surname

Yom Tov Lipman Heller (1579-1654), rabbi and communal leader, born in Wallerstein, Bavaria, Germany. He received a rich education not only in Jewish studies, but also in secular subjects. Age only 18 he was appointed dayan in Prague, serving for 28 years. From1625 he served as head of the beit din in Vienna. During the Thirty Years War he was accused by his enemies of unfairly taxing the poor and some Jews even alleged that he had defamed Christianity. He was sentenced to death but this was commuted to imprisonment; he was released after forty days and a heavy fine was imposed on him. In 1631 Heller moved to Poland, living in Lublin, Brest-Litovsk and Nimirow. (He later wrote a eulogy over the Nemirow community when it was destroyed in the Chmielnicki uprising). He was rabbi of Vladimir-Volynski from 1634 to 1643 when he was called to the rabbinate of Krakow, also serving as yeshiva head from 1648. His best-known work, Tosafot Yom Tov, was a commentary to the Mishnah. Heller also wrote kabbalistic commentaries, a commentary on the code of Asher ben Yehiel, responsa, sermons, liturgical poems and an autobiography.

Seligmann Heller (1831 - 1890), writer, born in Roudnice nad Lebem, Czech Republic (then part of the Austrian Empire) and studied at the University of Vienna. He then went into his business with his father and in 1866 became teacher of German at a commercial school in Prague, at the same time engaging in journalism. After the appearance of his epic on the Wandering Jew and a book of his poems, he moved to Vienna where he became dramatic critic for the Deutsche Zeitung and subsequently taught the history of literature at the Handelsakademie. Heller translated into German from the works of Dante, Sanskrit classic literature and medieval Hebrew poetry.

Tsevi Hirsch Heller (1776-1834) Rabbi.

Born in Zamoscz, he was noted for his acuity already as a youth. He was rabbi in Brugl, Silesia and then headed the yeshiva in Brody, many of his students later becoming renowned rabbis. Following a calumny, he moved to Hungary where he was rabbi in Ungvar and then from about 1820 in Bonyhad where he served for 13 years. A controversy with the Reform led him to leave to become rabbi in Obuda (Old Buda) but within a few months he died. Some of his responsa were published.

Joseph Heller (b. 1862), cantor and composer, born in Ujfalu, Hungary (then part of the Austrian Empire). He received his training in the school of music in Debrecen, Hungary, and in 1884 he was appointed cantor and precentor of the Jewish community of Kaposvar, Hungary. In 1890 he occupied a similar position at Brno, Czech Republic. In Brno he distinguished himself as director of the Kantoren-Bildungs-Anstalt of the Jewish proseminary, and as composer and editor of the Kol Tehillah ("Voice of Praise"), a comprehensive work, including compositions for a choir of four voices and solos as well as recitatives for the Jewish divine service both with and without organ accompaniment. The first part of the publication appeared in 1905, the second part in 1914.

Maximilian Heller (1860-1929), rabbi, an outstanding leader in the Reform Judaism, born in Prague, Czech Republic (then part of the Austrian Empire). On both sides of his family he was descended from distinguished rabbis and scholars. He went to the United States in 1897, and after studying at the University of Cincinnati (B.L., 1882; M/L., 1884) and at the Hebrew Union College (ordained, 1884), he served for two years as associate to Rabbi Bernard Felsenthal of Chicago. In 1886 he became rabbi at Houston, Texas, but after five months received a call to Temple Sinai of New Orleans, where he served for more than forty years until his retirement in 1927.

In New Orleans, Heller was active in the civic and educational life of the community, especially in promoting the cause of education and in fighting for the abolition of the Louisiana State Lottery. From 1892 to 1896 he was a member of the State Board of Education, and he served on practically every board of the Jewish welfare and educational organizations in the city. In 1912 he was appointed professor of the Hebrew and Hebrew literature at Tulane University, where he served until his retirement in 1928. He was a charter member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and served as its president in 1909 to 1911. An enthusiastic advocate of Zionism from the beginning of the movement, he was prominent in the Zionist Organization of America, and was its honorary vice-president from 1911 until hid death.

Heller was a prolific journalist, he also was editor of the New Orleans Jewish Leader from 1896 to 1897, editorial writer for the Cincinnati American Israelite from 1902 to 1914, and a frequent contributor to the local press. He also wrote: The Temple Pulpit, a collection of his sermons; Jubilee Souvenir, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Temple Sinai (1922); My month in Palestine (edited posthumously by his son James G. Heller; New York, 1930).

Isidor Heller (1816-1879), author, poet, and journalist, born in Mlada Bolesov (Jungbunzlau, in German), Czech Republic (then part of the Austrian Empire). After the age of sixteen he went to Prague, where he attended the Neustaadter Gymnasium, and the University of Prague. In 1837 he joined the French Foreign Legion. On his return to Bohemia he became a contributor to the magazines Ost und West and Libussa. In 1846 settled in Budapest whewre he srved as editor of Der Ungar. He also was the editor of Gustav Kuehne's Europa, in Leipzig, and the editor of the Budapest Morgenroete. (1848), until his opposition to the Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth forced him to leave for Germany.

Once again he came into conflict with the authorities because of his writings, and in 1852 he left the country as private secretary to an Austrian finance minister, Baron Bruck. In 1855 he went to Vienna, where he established the Fortschtrit (1859) and assisted in the founding of the Neues Fremdenblatt (1874). However, because of illness, he gave up writing, and spent the remaining fourteen years of his life in seclusion. Heller, whose novels and short stories were at one time widely read, include Gaange durch Prag, Das Judenbegraabnis, Dalibor, Erster April, Der Zeitgeist (Budapest, 1847), Die alliierten der Reaktion (Berlin, 1852), Oesterreichs Lage und Hilfsmittel (Leipzig, 1852), and Memoiren  des Baron Bruck (Vienna, 1877).

 Heller died in Arco, Tyrol, Austria.

Bernat Heller (1871-1943), rabbinical scholar, Arabist and literary historian, born in Bytča, Slovakia (Nagybittse, in Hungarian, then part of Austria-Hungary). He was was awarded his doctorate in 1894, and was ordained at the Budapest rabbinical seminary in 1896. From 1896 to 1919 he taught French and German and also Hungarian literature in a non-Jewish high school in Budapest. In 1919 he was appointed director of a newly established Jewish high school in Budapest. Between 1922 and 1931 he taught Bible, philosophy, Talmud and German language at the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest, and thereafter he was appointed superintendent of the Jewish schools in Budapest. Heller was a member of the ethnographical and oriental societies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Influenced by his teachers W. Bacher and I. Goldziher, Heller was a specialist in Aggadah and was intrigued by Islam. He tried to interpret aggadic literature by comparing its themes, motifs, and sources to the literatures of other peoples. He was particularly interested in tracing themes common to Aggadah, early Christian literature and Islamic legendary literature. He also wrote comparative studies on Western European literature, particularly with regards to Jewish influences on Western European and Hungarian novelists and poets. Heller was the author of most of the articles on the legends of Islam and the legends surrounding biblical personalities for the Encyclopaedia of Islam (4 vols., 1913-36), and for the German Encyclopaedia Judaica (10 vols., 1928-34). During the last years of his life, Heller devoted himself to the study of Apocrypha. He translated the Book of Tobias and the Additions to Daniel for A. Kahana's Sefarim ha-Hizonim (1947).

Among Heller's other works are: Az evangeliumi parabola viszonya az agadahoz (Budapest, 1894), Die Bedeutung des arabischen Antar-Romans fuer die vergleichende Literaturkunde (1931) and Das Hebraeische und arabische Maerchen (in J. Bolte and G. Polivka's Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmaerchen der Brueder Grimm, 4 (1930):315-418). A number of his works were written in French, including: Elements, paralleles et origins de la legende des sept dormants" (Paris, 1904); La legende judeo-chretienne du compagnon au Paradis (Paris, 1908). He was a frequent contributor to the Revue des Etudes Juives, the Jewish Quarterly Review, and the Monatsschrift fuer die Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums. Heller's devotion to his teacher I. Goldziher is reflected by his editing a volume in honor of his sixtieth birthday entitled Keleti tanulmanyok ("Oriental Studies", 1910). He translated Golziher's Vorlesungen ueber den Islam" into Hungarian as Eloadasok az iszlamrol (1912), and prepared a bibliography of Golziher's works, Bibliography des oeuvres de Ignac Goldziher (1927).

Bunim Heller (1908–1998), Yiddish poet and social activist, born in Warsaw, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire).  He attended a traditional heder and then a yeshiva, but left at the age of 14 when started to work as a glove maker. He started publishing his poems in 1930 and soon he was recognized as a poet of the working class in Poland. He immigrated to Belgium in 1937 and then moved to Paris, France. He returned to Poland in 1939, only to flee the German occupation of Warsaw ad taking refuge in Bialystok, in the Soviet occupied areas of Poland. He spent the years of WW2 in Alma Ata (now Almaty) in the Soviet Kazakhstan, and returned to Poland in 1947. he was editor of Yidishe Shriftn and Yidish Buch literary magazines. In 1950 he published Friling in Poilen ("Spring in Poland"), a collection of poems from the 1930s, followed by additional collections of poems during the early 1950. At the time, Heller was recognized as a leading Yiddish poet in the Communist states of Eastern Europe. Heller left Poland and after a short sojourn in Belgium and France, he immigrated to Israel in 1957.  

He published twenty-three volums of poetry, including Di erd hot getsiters (“The Earth Shook”, 1947), Heimerd (1951), Geklibene lider (“Selected Poems”, 1952), Baym rand (1957), Naye lider (“New Songs”, 1964), In varshaver geto iz hoidesh nisen (“In the Warsaw Ghetto is the month of Nissan “, 1973), Der gaist funem sturem (“The Spirit of the Storm”, 1992).  

Heller was awarded the Mendeli Prize for his book The Month of Nissan in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1975, and the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish literature in 1981. 

Suwałki 

Yiddish: סוּוואַלק (Suvalk), Hebrew: סובאלק; Russian: Сувалки / Suvalki; Lithuanian: Suvalkai; German: Suwalken, Sudauen (1941-1944)

City in Podlaskie province (Bialstok, before 1939), north-eastern Poland.

Jews were the largest religious group (over 60%) of Suwalki in the mid-19th century, reduced however due to decades of emigration and World War II.

21st Century

There is no Jewish community in Suwalki today. The cemetery was restored in the 1980s and the last burial has held in 1986. There are 32,000 Jews buried there.

In 2000 one remaining Jewish couple was living in what used to be a flourishing Jewish community renowned for its cultural, educational institutions such as its high schools and religious education with Talmud torah and yeshiva, and also for its political support for Zionism.

Contemporary residents are no longer as well acquainted with Jewish Suwalki. While projects had already been organized around Jewish Suwalki, in the mid-2010s further activities were launched in memory of Jewish Suwalki. Klezmer orchestra concerts were hosted, prewar photo exhibits and a film event, so also historic discussions for students, book talks and walking tour. Jewish history is still visible in sites such as a former Jewish school building, a prayer location and cemetery.

A home video was made in 1937 on a visit to Suwalki by a former native and family who had earlier emigrated to the USA, when visiting Suwalki. Recorded are the big synagogue, Jewish quarter, market place when family members discourse with locals and more.

In 2016 a monument was dedicated to the thousands of Jews who had perished in the Holocaust. It was placed where once stood the Great Synagogue of Suwalki, consecrated in the early 19th century.

History

The town began to develop toward the end of the 18th century under Prussian rule; Jews then settled there, numbering 44 (3.5% of the total population) in 1808. In 1815 Suwalki was incorporated within Congress Poland and between 1823 and 1862 restrictions of residence in some of the sections of the city were imposed upon a number of Jews. An organized community was formed at the beginning of the 1820s, and in 1827 numbered 1,209 (32% of the total population). A synagogue was built in 1821.

During the 19th century Jews in Suwalki developed trade relations with Germany, in particular for agricultural produce, timber, and horses. They also engaged in retail trade and crafts including tailoring, shoemaking, building, and transportation. In the second half of the 19th century, Jews in Suwalki engaged in the manufacture of prayer shawls, fulling, and tanning. During the Polish uprising in 1863 many Jews in Suwalki and the surrounding area took an active part in the struggle against the Russian army. Two of them, Leib Lipman and Leib Lejbman, were executed by the Czarist authorities. Following persecutions and disasters of nature Jews emigrated from Suwalki, among them, in the early 80s, a number of followers of the Am Olam movement. In 1866 a Benevolent Society for Natives of Suwalki was founded in New York. The Jewish population numbered 6,587 (62% of the total) in 1857, and 7,165 (40%) in 1897. From the latter year until 1914 Jewish traders and craftsmen supplied the garrison stationed in the locality.

Jewish national activity in the community began as early as the movement for settlement in Eretz Israel in 1881. In 1891 the Safah Berurah society for the propagation of Hebrew in Suwalki had 70 members. A Jewish workers' association was formed in 1901. Members of the Bund and Po'alei Tzion in Suwalki took an active part in the revolutionary period of 1905-06, and organized self-defense against pogroms.

In World War I the Jews in Suwalki suffered severely during the retreat of the Russian army in the beginning of the summer of 1915. In the interwar period, under Polish rule, Jews opened factories for woolen textiles, and timber and food products. The Jewish population numbered 5,747 (34% of the total) in 1921, and 5,811 in 1931. Jewish institutions in Suwalki included schools of the tarbut (culture) and Central Yiddish Schools Organization (CYSHO), a Talmud torah (founded in 1861), and a yeshivah (1936). A Jewish self-defense organization in 1936 prevented a pogrom by the Polish population.

Among distinguished rabbis who served in Suwalki in the second half of the 19th century were Isaac Eisik Wildmann (Haver) (1850-53); Jehiel B. Aaron Heller (1853-1857); Samuel B. Judah Leib Mohilewer (1860-68); and David Tevel Katzenellenbogen (in the 1890s). Personalities born in Suwalki or active there include the educator Alexander M. Dushkin; Pinchas Sapir (Israel cabinet minister); and Avraham Stern (leader of Lechi).
 

The Holocaust Period

Before the outbreak of World War II there were about 6,000 Jews in Suwalki. The Jewish community was liquidated at the end of November 1939 when the Jews were deported to Biala Podlaska, Lukow, Miedzyrzec-Podlaksi, and Kock and shared the fate of these communities. After the war the Jewish community of Suwalki was not reconstituted.

Nemirov

Pol. Niemirow; in Ukrainian: Немирів / Nemyriv

Town in Vinnitsa Oblast, Ukraine.

It was annexed by Russia after the second partition of Poland (1793), and was incorporated in the district of Podolia until the Russian Revolution. Under Polish rule it was a fortified city of considerable importance.

A Jewish settlement in Nemirov is first mentioned in 1603. In the 1630s, Yom Tov Lipmann Heller held rabbinical office there for a while. During the Chmielnicki Persecutions of 1648 thousands of Jews from other localities sought refuge in Nemirov; however, the city fell to the Cossacks, who massacred the Jews. The slaughter at Nemirov, one of the worst of that period, created a profound impression, becoming a symbol of all the terrible massacres the Jews suffered at the hands of cruel rioters. Reports and legends spread about the heroic acts of the Jews of Nemirov who chose martyrdom, and rabbis and paytanim composed special kinot and selichot on the destruction of the community. At a meeting of the Council of the Lands held in 1650, the anniversary of the massacre (20th of Sivan) was proclaimed a day of mourning and public fasting. Jews resettled in Nemirov after the town was retaken by the Poles and their situation was especially satisfactory under the Turkish rule over Podolia (1672-99). At the beginning of the 18th century the Great Synagogue was erected. Early in the 19th century, Nemirov became a center for the Chasidim of Nachman of Bratslav. In 1765, 602 Jewish poll-tax payers were registered; the Jewish population increased from 4,386 in 1847 to 5,287 (59.3% of the total population) in 1897.

In 1917 a democratic community headed by the Zionists was established, but with the consolidation of the Soviet regime it was liquidated. During the Russian Civil War, the Jews also suffered, but largely because of good relations with their Christian neighbors, they were spared from massacres. There were 4,176 Jews (57.2% of the population) living in Nemirov in 1926.

After the German occupation during World War II (summer 1941), the Jews of Nemirov, as well as Jewish refugees from Bessarabia, were deported for extermination in three actions which took place in November 1941, June 1942, and May 1943.

Wierzbnik Starachowice
 

A town in central Poland.

The town stands on the river Kamienna, a tributary of the Wisla, near the Skarzysko-Ostrowiec railway line. Wierzbnik was founded in 1624 on the left bank of the river.

After the partitions of Poland (in the years 1772-1795), the district became part of Czarist Russia.

In 1939 Wierzbnik and Starachowice were united and received the status of a town. Since 1949 it is called Starachowice.
 

History

Jews came to the area in the mid-17th century and settled in Wierzbnik towards the end of the 18th century.

At about the end of the 19th century, or beginning of the twentieth, Wierzbnik received the status of an independent community and Rabbi Jacob Arieh Gershonowitz Morgenstern, from the town of Lukow, was appointed the community's rabbi. The last rabbi of Wierzbnik was Rabbi Ben-Zion Rabinowitz.

The beth-midrash building was completed in 1910. The offices of the community and Talmud tora school were built nearby. At the same time, a mikve (purification bath) was opened. The local cemetery was also used by Jews of the surrounding areas.

The organized community had a beth midrash, which was used as a central prayer house. There were many Hassidic stiblach, among them those of the Gur, Amshynow, Sokolow, Cmielow, Ozarow and Wonhock Hassidim. The children of the community studied in the heders.

In addition to heders, the community had other educational institutions, among them the Mizrachi and Beit Jacob schools, as well as a Tarbut Hebrew school. A Talmud tora school for families of limited means functioned between the two world wars. For a time it was financed by the joint which also provided free meals for the children.

The Beit Joseph yeshiva was founded in the 1930s and functioned only for a few years. At this period the polish government attached the Jewish community of Wanhock to Wierzbnik one.

The Jewish population was involved in the public life of the town. Its representatives took part in municipal affairs and acted on the community's behalf in its relations with the Polish authorities.

The rich forests in the vicinity of Wierzbnik were the basis for the development of a timber industry. Its various branches were sources of income for Jews. Plywood factories and saw mills were owned by the Jewish families Heller, Lichtenstein and Kalmanson.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Jewish family Rotband from Warsaw, set up a foundry and metal factory in Starachowice, which had big deposits of high-quality iron ore. At the beginning of the 20th century, this plant developed into the big "Starachowice Works". In 1920-1922 it was nationalized by the polish government and became a military industry, employing about 20,000 workers, none of whom were Jews.

At this time the Heller family, who owned an international timber industry corporation, founded a modern plywood factory and saw mill. These enterprises were a source of income for the Jewish population in Wierzbnik and also supported welfare organizations as well as social and cultural institutions of the Jewish community.

Jewish inhabitants in Wierzbnik also earned their living by trade, and various services to the inhabitants of Starachowice and the surrounding villages. A market day was held in Wierzbnik once a week. Jews and Poles had good-neighborly relations. The local polish population refused to cooperate with the government when - due to the wave of antisemitism which swept Poland following the economic crisis in the 1930s - the authorities declared a boycott on business and trade with Jews.

The Jews who had fled from Russia after the 1917 revolution and were employed by local factories causes the arousal of Jewish national and Zionist awareness in Wierzbnik.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a local branch of the Histadrut Hazionit was established which trained Haluzim for Aliya to Eretz Israel. Later on, branches of the Mizrachi, Revisionist and Poaley Zion Smol, and of the youth movements Gordonia, Betar and Zionist Youth, as well as the sports organizations Maccabbi and Gwiazda were set up. Hassidim from all the stiblach were members of the Agudat Israel branch which was established in the town.

The Tarbut school contributed to the popularity of the Hebrew language and became the center for the town's cultural and social activities.

At this time, the head of the community was Shmuel Puchaczevsky, the last holder of that office in Wierzbnik.

In 1939 about 3,200 Jews were living in Wierzbnik, out of a total population of some 40,000.


The Holocaust Period

With the outbreak of World War II (September 1, 1939), Wierzbnik-Starachowice was bombed from the air. Most of the Jews fled from the town, but they returned after a few days.

On September 5, 1939 the German army occupied the town. Each day new regulations were issued, placing restrictions on Jews. They were ordered to wear a yellow patch, to hand over their jewellery, silver and gold coins to the Germans. They were not allowed to frequent public places or to have contacts with the non-Jewish population. Food was rationed. Jews were rounded up on the streets and sent to forced labor. From time to time the community had to pay ransom, which the Germans called contributions.

At the end of Yom Kippur that year, the beth hamidrash was set on fire and all the tora scrolls were burned. The fire also destroyed the nearby building, housing the community's offices and Talmud tora.

In the spring of 1940 , refugees from Lodz and Plock arrived in the town. The Jewish quarter was overcrowded, which resulted in the spread of diseases. The community set up a shelter and soup kitchen for the needy. The ghetto was established in May 1940. At the beginning it was not closed, and it was possible to buy food in the town. Later, trade stopped, the ghetto was closed, and the number of destitute people increased.

Those fit for work were employed at the Starachowice Works, which supplied the German army and later became part of the Hermann Goering Werke. Rumours of mass exterminations reached the town and Jews tried to obtain permits for work in factories essential for the war effort.

On October 27, 1942 - 16th day of the month of Heshvan the Wierzbnik-Starachowice ghetto was liquidated.

The Jews were taken at dawn to the market place and surrounded by SS troops, Polish policemen and Latvian units. The Latvians beat the Jews and robbed them. Those who had work permits were separated by force from their families and sent to labour camps at Strzelnica and Majowka near the town. Others, considered fit for work, were taken to the local saw mills and the electricity plant. The remainder of the ghetto population were deported to the death camp of Treblinka. Jews who had not been in the market place that morning and were found in the ghetto were shot on the spot. That day, 5000 Jews were sent to death and about 1500 sent to labor camps.

Thousands died in the labor camps in the region of whilst others were killed or deported to death camps following selections, separation of the fit from the unfit for work.

In 1944, the Jewish fighting organization (Z.O.B.) Succeeded in making contact with men in the labor camps and gave them money to buy food. This contact encouraged Jews to escape from the camps. Some of those who escaped were killed by the German and Ukrainian guards, others were murdered by antisemitic Polish partisans who were members of the Armia Krajowa. In July 1944, the camps were liquidated and the inmates deported to Auschwitz.

Many young Jews of Wierzbnik-Starachowice fought the Germans in the ranks of the Polish army. Some of them, who had escaped to Russia at the outbreak of the war, joined the Red Army. Those who had escaped from the ghetto and labor camps joined local partisans and cooperated with Polish partisans, who were members of the Armia Ludova.

A partisan unit called Garbaty, under the command of a man from Wierzbnik, Jechiel Bravermann, was well known for its daring operations.

 

Postwar

After the war most of the Jewish survivors of Wierzbnik immigrated to Israel. Some went to U.S.A. Canada and other countries. The few Jews who returned to their home town after the end of the war, were murdered by Polish marauders.

The local Jewish cemetery still exists. It has over 200 tomb stones with Hebrew inscriptions.