Kibbutz Hachshara in Rovno (Rovna), Poland, 1935

Rivne

Рівне; also known as Rovno; in Polish: Rowne; in Jewish sources: Rovna

A city in western Ukraine in the historical region of Volhynia. The administrative center of the Rivno Oblast. Under Polish rule until 1793, and again between 1920-1939

In 2014 there were approximately 600 Jews living in Rivne. What was once the Great Synagogue was converted into a sports center, the Avantgarde, during the 1950s. Since 2003 there has been a Chabad, with approximately 30-50 people attending its Shabbat services. Hessed Osher, one of a number of Hessed centers built by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, is the center of Rivne's Jewish community. Gennady Fraerman is the director of Hessed Osher, as well as the head of the Rivne Jewish community.

In 1991 a memorial was built in the Sosenki Forest, approximately 4 miles (6km) from Rivne, where, on November 7-8 1941 approximately 18-22,000 men, women, and children from Rivne were shot and killed.

HISTORY

Jews are first mentioned in Rivne in 1566 and Jewish creditors from the town are recorded in 1571.

The Jewish community of Rivne fell victim to the Chmielnitski Massacres of 1648-1649. In 1649 there were six Jewish homes in Rivne, and by 1654 there were only two. By the 18th century, however, the Jewish community began to recover, evidenced by the fact that in 1700 the Jews of the town were paying 1,000 zlotys in poll taxes. In 1723 the town came under the possession of the Lubomirski family, who made efforts to develop it and attract Jews there. On July 13, 1749 Prince Stanislaw Lubomirski granted a charter that allowed for the establishment of an official Jewish community, with affiliated institutions. Prince Josef Lubomirski confirmed and renewed these rights on April 21, 1789. The Kahal (official governing body of the Jewish community) of Rivne is mentioned in 1739 when the Council of Four Lands reduced the amount of taxes that the community of Rivne was required to pay.

The Hasidic movement was influential within Rivne. The Magid of Mezritsh, Dov Ber, lived in Rivne from 1760 until 1772. That year a number of Hasidic leaders gathered in Rivne in order to discuss and respond to the recent ban placed by the Gaon of Vilna on Hasidim.

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century Rivne began developing rapidly. This was largely a result of the building of the Kiev-Warsaw railroad, and the subsequent Vilna-Rivne line that was completed in 1885. Because of the railroad, Rivne became an economic and commercial center for Volhynia.

A Hibbat Zion group was formed in Rivne in 1884. Later various other Zionist parties were organized in the city, and their members were active participants in Zionist Congresses. A chapter of the Bund was formed in 1903. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the Bund and Zionist socialist parties were particularly active in Rivne. A number of Jewish trade unions were also formed. When the city was briefly under Ukrainian rule, Rivne's central Zionist office coordinated activities throughout Volhynia and Podolia.

The influence of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and the Zionist movements resulted in an interest in reviving the Hebrew language. At first, Hebrew was only taught in the cheder metukkan ("reformed" cheder) and in private Hebrew schools. Later, however, the Jews of Rivne would have a number of options when it came to learning Hebrew. In 1911 a division of the Chovevei Sefat Ever ("Lovers of the Hebrew Language") was formed. Tarbut established a branch in Rivne in 1919, which soon became the central branch of the organization for Volhynia. That same year, the Tarbut high school was established, which attracted Jewish students from villages throughout Volhynia. The high school was followed by two Tarbut elementary schools and several Hebrew kindergartens. There was also a Talmud Torah, two Yiddish schools, and two Jewish high schools in which the language of instruction was Polish.

The short-lived period of Ukrainian independence (1918-1920) was a difficult time for the Jews of Rivne. During the spring of 1919 Symon Petliura's soldiers carried out several pogroms; later the city was conquered by the Red Army. In the spring of 1920 Rivne reverted back to Poland.

From 1924 until 1939 the Yiddish newspaper, "Vohliner Leben" ("Volhynian Life") was published weekly in Rivne.

Rivne became part of Soviet Ukraine in 1939. During this period (1939-1941) Jewish organizations were forced to stop their activities, Bund and Zionist leaders were imprisoned, Hebrew schools were shuttered and Jewish businessmen often found themselves discriminated against. Many Jewish refugees from Western Poland sought shelter in Rivne, which soon became an important center of underground Zionist activity, helping Jews escape to Vilna and towards the Romanian and Hungarian borders.

After the outbreak of the Soviet-German War (June 22, 1941), Rivne fell to the Germans on June 29 1941; that same day, 300 Jews from Rivne were killed and by the end of the summer about 3,000 Jews had been murdered. More than 1,000 Jews were killed between October and November 1941. A Judenrat was established and led by the former director of one of the Jewish high schools, Dr. Moisei Bergman and Yakov (Leon) Sukharchuk. Both committed suicide before the end of the year. On November 7-8, 1941, approximately 21,000 Jews from Rivne were taken to a pine grove in Sosenki and killed. A ghetto was then established for the remaining 5,000 Jews.

Starvation and disease claimed many victims in the ghetto, in spite of efforts to reduce epidemics. The ghetto was liquidated on July 13, 1942. A number of Jews managed to escape Rivne and joined the partisan groups operating in the district. On February 5, 1944 they were able to help liberate Rivne from the Nazis.

After the war, about 1,000 Jews were living in Rivne, in an area around the Great Synagogue; only 100 of them were survivors from the original community of Rivne. A search was made to find Jewish children among the peasants in the nearby villages and to mark the sites of the mass graves of Jews murdered by the Nazis. A community organization and synagogue were opened. Former partisans began organizing illegal emigration to Palestine and by 1946 most of the Holocaust survivors who had been living in Rivne had emigrated; in the meantime, other Jews from the interior of the Soviet Union began arriving in the town, thus maintaining a relatively stable Jewish population.

In 1957 the Jewish cemetery was divided into two sites, a park and an area for cattle to graze. The remaining synagogue, which consisted of one room, was closed down by authorities and its Torah scrolls were confiscated. The former Great Synagogue was converted into a sports gymnasium. The mass graves of the Jews murdered by the Nazis remained unmarked until 1991. The Osher Shvartsman Jewish Culture Society was established in 1989 on the site of a small synagogue building of the Trisk Hasidim.

In 1765 there were 1,186 Jews in the Rivne community (890 in the town itself, and 296 in the villages subject to Rivne's Kahal); by 1801 there were 2,137 Jews in the town. That number rose to 3,788 in 1847, to 13,780 (56% of the total population) in 1897. During the 20th century, until World War II, the Jewish population continued to rise; there were 21,702 in Rivne (71%) in 1921, 22,737 in 1931, and about 28,000 in 1939. In 1959 there were 1,311 Jews living in Rivne (2% of the total population). In 1970 that number rose to 1,787, and in 1989 there were 1,230 Jews in the city.

Notable figures from Rivne included the historian Mark Wischnitzer, the linguist Nokhem Shtif, the socialist Moyshe Zilberfarb, the journalist and social welfare advocate Sophie Irene Loeb (1876-1929), the former Canadian senator Mira Spivak (born 1934), the Polish poet Zuzanna Ginczanka (pen name Sara Ginzburg, 1917-1945), the Israeli writer Dahn Ben-Amotz (born Moshe Tillimzeiger), and Fania Mussman (1913-1951), the mother of Israeli writer Amos Oz.