The Jewish Community of Chernivtsi
Chernivtsi
In Ukrainian: Чернівці / Chernivtsi; in Russian: Chernovtsy; In Romanian: Cernauti, In German and in Jewish sources: Czernowitz צ'רנוביץ
A city in Ukraine. Between the two World Wars in Romania.
Chernovtsy, then Cernauti, was the capital of Bukovina. The area was under Austrian rule in the years 1775-1918.
Both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews are mentioned in Chernovtsy from 1408. Later the Chernovtsy community assumed a distinctly Ashkenazi character, with Yiddish as the spoken language. The second half of the 17th century brought Jewish immigrants and culture from Poland. The Russian-Turkish wars (1766-74) caused severe hardship and the Jews had to leave Chernovtsy for a time. After the area came under Austrian rule in 1775 the Austrian military regime immediately began a policy of discrimination with the avowed aim of "clearing" Bukovina of Jews.
Nevertheless, a number of Jews from Galicia immigrated to Bukovina in this period, and many settled in Chernovtsy. Despite the restrictions still in force the Jews there acquired real property and engaged in large-scale commercial transactions. In 1812, during the Napoleonic wars, Jewish goods and property were plundered by the Russian army.
Tension arose within the community between the Chasidim and Maskilim at the beginning of the 19th century, and later intensified. Cultural life developed after 1848, along with trends toward assimilation and the penetration of Haskalah attitudes to wider circles. The foundation of a university there in 1875 attracted Jewish students throughout Bukovina and had a stimulating and diversifying influence on the social and cultural life of the community.
From the end of the 19th century student organizations played an important part in the Zionist movement in Chernovtsy.
In 1872 the community split into independent orthodox and reform sections. A reform temple opened in 1877 was destroyed by the Nazis in 1944. Zionism made headway in the city despite opposition from the assimilationist and orthodox elements. Jews also took an active part in public affairs. As early as 1897 one of the Jewish leaders, Benno Straucher, was returned to the Austrian parliament as representative for Czernowitz (1897-1914).
During World War I, when the city passed from hand to hand between the Russians and the Austrians, the community suffered great hardship, and many left the city. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1918 the soldiers of the Romanian army who entered Chernovtsy behaved brutally toward the Jews and started a wave of persecution. After incorporation of the city into Romania and with the institution of the civil government, the situation of the Jews improved. One of the prominent personalities of Chernovtsy Jewry in general was the Zionist leader Meir Ebner, editor of a German-language newspaper there. Other outstanding personalities who represented the Jews in the Romanian parliament were the historian Manfred Reifer, and the socialist leader Jacob Pistiner. The community numbered 43,701 in 1919 (47.4% of the total population). Hebrew works were printed in Chernovtsy for over a century, from 1835 to 1939, and nearly 340 items were issued by nine publishers and printers. Of these the most important was the house of Eckhardt where, with the help of Jewish experts, there were printed a complete Babylonian Talmud, a bible with standard commentaries, the Mishnah with commentaries, and other important rabbinic Kabbalistic-Chasidic works.
The Holocaust Period
In 1941 the Jewish population numbered 50,000, due to the influx of Jews from the smaller towns and villages in Bukovina.
On the night of June 30, 1941, the Soviet army vacated Chernovtsy and gangs broke into Jewish homes, looting and burning them. On July 5, the first units of the German and Romanian armies entered the town, accompanied by Einsatzkommando 10B, which was a section of Einsatzgruppe D. This unit fulfilled its task of inciting the Romanians against the Jews; on the pretext that the Jews were plotting against the government, they murdered the Jewish Intelligentsia, among them the chief rabbi of Bukovina, Abraham Mark, the chief cantor, and leaders of the community.
On July 30, when the anti-Jewish measures introduced by Antonescu's government went into effect, hostages were taken and Jews were compelled to do forced labor and to wear the yellow badge. The authorities permitted Jews to be seen on hunted down in the streets and houses. On October 11 the Jews were concentrated in a ghetto, their property was confiscated, and deportations to Transnistria began. On October 14, 1941, the chairman of the union of Jewish communities, Wilhelm Filderman, obtained a cessation of deportations, but the decision was carried out only a month later, and by November 15, 1941, about 30,000 Jews had been deported. The mayor of Chernovtsy, Traian Popovici, also attempted to stop deportations, issuing about 4,000 certificates of exemption from deportation, but the officials of the municipality, the police and the gendarmerie extorted enormous sums of money in return for these exemptions. Many Jews were deported even after they paid the ransom. After a short break, deportations were resumed and about 4,000 Jews were deported in three waves between June 17 and 27, 1942. Some of the deportees were taken to camps east of the Bug river (an area occupied by the Germans) where children up to the age of 15, old people, invalids, women, and those unfit for work were systematically murdered. About 60% of the deportees from Chernovtsy to Transnistria perished there. Most survivors who returned did not resettle in Chernovtsy, which had in the meantime been annexed to the Ukrainian republic in the Soviet Union, but went to Romania and from there to Eretz Israel.
In the 1950's the government closed five of the six synagogues and all of the Torah scrolls were placed in a museum. One of the synagogues was made into a sports center and another into a movie theater. The other synagogues became workshops and warehouses. One small synagogue still remains for 50-60 worshippers. In 1970, the Jewish population in Chernovtsy numbered 70,000.
Else Cross
(Personality)Else Cross (born Else Krams, married Else Gross) (1902-1987), pianist, born in Chernivtsi (Czernowitz), Ukraine (then part of Austria-Hungary). She began her music studies in Czernowitz and in her teens she was sent to Vienna, Austria. There she continued studying music history and theory. Cross studied piano with Eduard Steuermann and Anton Webern. In 1933, at the age of thirty-one she made her first solo appearance with the Wiener Konzertorchester.
In 1938, when the Nazis took over Austria, she went in exile in Great Britain. She was a teacher at various colleges in 1962 she was appointed a professor of piano at the London Royal Academy of Music in London working there until her retirement in 1982. For her outstanding interpretation of contemporary music she was awarded the Brahms Prize.
Itzik Manger
(Personality)Itzik Manger (1901-1969), a prominent Yiddish poet and playwright, born in Chernivtsi (Czernowitz), Ukraine (then in the historical region of Bukovina, part of Austria-Hungary). His first poem was published in 1921 in a Romanian Yiddish-language journal. Manger lived in Romania, first in Bucharest and later in Iasi, then in Warsaw, Poland, during 1927-1938, and in Paris, France. In World War II he escaped to England, where he lived until 1951, when he moved to New York and in 1967 he immigrated to Israel. His volumes of poetry, of which his Humesh Lider - in which biblical figures are portrayed as Jews living in the shtetl - became extremely popular. His Megille Lider, a Purim play, was set to music in 1967 and ran for many performances in Israel. He wrote in many genres including poetry, a novel and short stories. Manger died in Gedera, Israel.
Abraham Baer Birnbaum
(Personality)Abraham Baer Birnbaum (1864-1922) , cantor and composer, born in Pultusk, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). He studied violin with Hayyim Janowski in Lodz. At the age of nineteen he was appointed cantor in Hethars, Hungary (now Lipany, Slovakia), and later returned to Poland as chief cantor in Czestochowa, where, in 1907, he opened a cantorial school.
Birnbaum is the author of Hallel Hahazanut (published 1897), a compilation of Sabbath eve melodies arranged for choir and organ, and of Hallel Vezimrah (two parts – 1908, 1912), a treatment of liturgical music for cantor and choir. He also composed Romance for violin and piano, and music to poems by Bialik, Frischman and Frug, among others. Died in Czestochowa, Poland.
Jacob Frank
(Personality)Jacob Frank (1726-1791), pseudo-messiah, born in Korolowka, Podolia, he was a trader who, while in Turkey, came into contact with the group that continued to believe in the messiahship of Shabbetai Tsevi. He began to study the Zohar and came to believe he was the reincarnation of Shabbetai Tsevi and developed a theology with a trinitarian basis (God, the Messiah, and the Shekhina - a female hypostasis of God). He acquired a following in eastern Europe and was excommunicated by the rabbis in 1756. The rabbis denounced the group to the Catholic authorities but Frank put himself under the protection of the bishop of Kaminiec-Podolski who ordered a public disputation. The Frankists accepted Christianity and Frank was baptized in Warsaw cathedral with the king as his godfather. However the Church grew suspicious and he was exiled for 13 years to the fortress of Czestochowa. On his release he moved to Bruenn and then to Offenbach where the sect was reestablished under the 'Holy Lord;' who now called himself Baron von Frank. After his death the sect continued to exist in Offenbach under Frank's daughter, Eve, as ' queen' and 'high priestess' practicing secret rites including ritual orgies. Eventually it disintegrated.
Eliezer Steinbarg
(Personality)Eliezer Steinbarg (1880-1932), educator and fabulist, born in Lipcani, Moldova (then part of the Russian Empire). He received a rich Jewish education and was self-educated in secular subjects. Like his cousin Yehuda Steinberg, he became an educator and for many years headed a Hebrew-Yiddish school in Lipcani. He wrote Yiddish fables and his fame reached Bialik who was preparing to publish a volume of Steinbarg's fables when World War I broke out and they only appeared after Sreinbarg's death. They then achieved widespread popularity and were translated into many languages. After 1920 he lived in Czernowitz, except for two years (1928-30) when he directed a Jewish day school in Rio de Janeiro. In Czernowitz he was the outstanding figure in Jewish cultural life.
Victor Conrad
(Personality)Victor Conrad (1876-1962), meteorologist, born and educated in Vienna, Austria (then part of Austria-Hungary). Upon graduation be became a staff member of the department of Meteorology and Magnetism at the University of Vienna. There he founded a section for the observation of electricity in the air, which was important to the discovery of cosmic rays some years later.
Victor Conrad served as head of the department of cosmic physics at the University of Czernowitz (1910), Bukovina (now in Ukraine), until the World War I. In 1918 he returned to the University of Vienna, to the Institute of Meteorology, where he started a seismographic station for the observation of geophysical problems (earthquakes). Victor Conrad was later (1920-1938) involved with the research of bioclimatic issues. He was editor of the geophysical quarterly Gerlands Beitraege zur Geophysik (1926-1938), and edited 39 volumes. He wrote the chapter of climatic elements and their dependence on terrestrial influences, in the 500 pages Handbuch der Klimatologie" published by Wladimir Koppen, a famous meteorologist.
After the takeover by the Nazis, Conrad escaped to the USA. He was invited to lecture and do research in the Penn State Meteorology program, where he remained for a little over a year in 1939-1940. He then joined Harvard University at Boston where he continued lecturing and conducting research on climatology. In Boston he published Fundamentals of Physical Climatology (1942), and Methods in Climatology (1944) together with Professor L.W. Pollak of Dublin.
Conrad died in Boston in 1962.
Charlotte Demant
(Personality)Charlotte Demant (1894-1970), singer, musicologist and pianist, born in Ternopil, Ukraine (then Tarnopol, Austria-Hungary). Demant studied piano in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now in Ukraine), and vocal studies in Vienna, from 1914. In Vienna, she also studied theory of musical forms, with Anton Webern, and piano with Eduard Steuermann. Demant worked as a concert singer, and music instructor.
She left for USSR in 1936 and in 1938 moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia. A year later she settled in Manchester, England, where Demant was conductor of a women’s choir. She returned to Vienna after WWII (1946) and was a music instructor at the Wiener Konservatorium. She married the composer Hans Eisler, and their son was the famous painter Georg Eisler.
Jacob Ashel Groper
(Personality)Jacob (Yaakov) Ashel Groper (1890-1968), poet, journalist, born in Mihaileni, Romania. As a law student in Iasi, he was already furthering Yiddish culture. He participated in the 1908 Czernowitz Yiddish Conference and wrote in Yiddish, German and Romanian before deciding to concentrate on Yiddish. His poems appeared in many publications and some were translated into Romanian. Groper raised the prestige of Yiddish in Romania and was regarded as the country's outstanding Yiddish poet. In 1964 he immigrated to Israel and settled in Haifa.
Jacob Friedman
(Personality)Jacob Friedman (1910-1972), Yiddish poet, born in Melnytsya-Podilska, Ukraine, (then Mielnica, in East Galicia province of Austria-Hungary). He lived in Czernowitz, Bukovina, Romania (now in Ukraine) until 1929, when he moved to Warsaw, Poland, staying there until 1932, when he returned to Czernowitz. During World War II, he was deported by the Romanian authorities to Bershad camp in Transnistria. After he was liberated in 1944, he moved to Bucharest, Romania. In 1947, trying to reach Eretz Israel by illegal immigration, he was interned in Cyprus by the British authorities. Finally, he arrived in Israel in 1948.
Friedman’s works include Adam, Shabes (both 1939), Pastekher in Yisroel (1953), Di Legende Noyakh Green (1958), Nefilim (1963) and Libshaft (1967).