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The Jewish Community of Smarhon

Smarhon

Смаргонь / Smarhon; in Russian: Smorgon

A city in Grodno Oblast, Belarus. The town passed from Poland to Russia in 1793; between 1921 and 1945 within independent Poland. From the 16th century until the second half of the 19th century, the town was the private property of the Princes of Radziwill.

21st Century

There were a few Jews living in Smorgon in 2009.

History

Jewish settlement in Smorgon is believed to date from the early 17th century. From 1628 the Jews of Smorgon paid their taxes to the community administration of Grodno. In 1631 the community of Smorgon became the center of a galil (province) within the framework of the Council of Lithuania. The autonomous status of the community was confirmed in 1651. In 1765 there were 649 Jews in the community of Smorgon who paid the poll tax. During the 1830s a Jewish agricultural settlement, Karka, with 30 farmsteads, was established near the town. On the eve of World War I, 40 Jewish families there worked on the land. In 1847 there were 1,621 Jews living in Smorgon.

A tanning industry was begun in the town as a result of Jewish initiative in the 1860s. In addition to this, the Jews of the town earned their livelihoods from carpentry, the knitting of socks, the baking of bagels which were famous throughout Russia, retail trade, and peddling. The Bund gained many adherents among the workers of Smorgon. From 1899 a Zionist organization was active in the town and in 1905 a branch of the Zionist Socialist Workers' Party was established. In 1897 there were 6,743 Jews living in Smorgon (76% of the population).

On the eve of World War I, there were two battei midrash, seven synagogues, three elementary yeshivot, and a Jewish hospital in the town. A section of the town's Jewish population were chabad chasidim. In 1915, during World War I, many of the Jews in Smorgon were expelled to the Russian interior. Jewish refugee tanners from Smorgon founded the tanning industries in Kharkov, Rostov, and Bogorodsk. When Smorgon reverted to independent Poland after World War I the Jewish refugees began to return to their destroyed houses.

Between the two world wars, a Hebrew tarbut school, a drama circle (Bamati), sports clubs, Zionist youth circles, and branches of Po'alei Zion, He-Chalutz and Ha-Shomer Hatsair functioned in the town.

The spiritual leaders of the community during the early second half of the 18th century included the rabbi of the community Rabbi Chayyim Cohen. In 1827-28 the town rabbi was the renowned Manasseh B. Joseph of Ilya, a native of Smorgon. Subsequently, a dynasty of rabbis descended from Rabbi Leib Shapira established themselves in the town. From 1910 to 1917 Judah Leib Gordin, the author of Teshuvat Yehudah, held rabbinical office in the town. Nahum Slouschz, the author Aaron Abraham Kabak, the Yiddish poet Moshe Kulbak, and David Raziel, commander of the Irgun Tzevai Le'ummi, were natives of Smorgon.
 

The Holocaust Period

In September 1939 the Red Army entered the town and a Soviet administration was established until the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in June 1941, when the Germans occupied the town. The Germans established two ghettos in different places there. In the summer of 1942 some Jews were sent to Kovno (Kaunas) and shared the fate of that community while the others were sent to Ponary near Vilna, and were killed there.

 

Postwar

The Jewish community of Smorgon was not reconstituted after the war. An organization of former residents of Smorgon was formed in Israel.

Menashe Ben Porath (1767-1831) Haskala forerunner. Born in Smorgonie, he was a child genius and received a talmudic education from his father who was a dayyan. In 1784 he married and went to live in the home of his father-in-law in Ilya. He was a student and intimate of the Vilna Gaon but gradually moved towards greater rationalism and challenged certain talmudic writings as well as Kabbalah. He advocated modernized education curricula and called for modifications in halakha. Menashe was socially aware and called for justice for the poor and wanted the occupational emphasis of the Jews to be on crafts not trades. He was persecuted for his ideas and threatened with excommunication. He wrote many works but as the rabbis refused their approbration it was difficult for his works to be published and indeed some of them were burnt. In 1827 the Smorgonie community elected him their rabbi but he resigned after a year. He died in a cholera epidemic. Most of Menashe's works were destroyed in a great fire in Ilya in 1884. He was posthumously much admired by the maskilim.

Abraham Sutzkever (1913-2010), poet

Born in Smargon, Belarus (the part of the Russian Empire), into a well-known Hassidic family. When he was two years old his family escaped from the invading Germans to Siberia. In 1920 the family returned and settled in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Sutzkever was educated. He studied at the University of Vilnius and in the early 1930s his talent was recognized by the poet Leizer Wolf, member of the Young Vilna group. During World War II, Sutzkever escaped the Vilna ghetto and joined the partisans. In 1947 he emigrated to Eretz Israel.
Sutzkever’s books of poetry include Lider (Poems, 1937), Valdiks (Forests, 1940), Die Festung (Fortress, 1945), Lider fun Geto (Songs of the Ghetto, 1946), Yidishe Gas (Jewish Street, 1948), and Geheymshot (Secret Town, 1948). Numerous poems by him appeared in the Yiddish literary quarterly Di Goldene Keyt that he edited from 1949.

Moshe Koussevitzky (1899-1966), cantor, born in Smorgon, near Vilna, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). He and his family spent the years of World War I in Rostov-on-Don and then returned to Vilna. There he began to sing in the choir of Toharat Kodesh synagogue where the famous cantor Abraham Moshe Berenstein officiated. He became leading tenor in the choir and one day, during Sabbath service, he replaced one of the other tenors in a solo piece. His performance was a great success and the public started to ask for him to appear as a cantor on his own. When the synagogue officials refused, he began to sing every Sabbath in a different synagogue in Vilna.
After he was well known in Vilna, he was appointed chief cantor of the famous Tlomacka Street synagogue in Warsaw. In 1928 he first appeared in Antwerp, singing before an enthusiastic crowd. This was the first of his many performances in Antwerp and Brussels. He toured all over Europe, North and South America, South Africa and Israel. His singing was compared to that of the great Gershon Sirota. He died in New York and was buried in Jerusalem.

Samuel Ben Avigdor (1720-1793), rabbi. His first position was at Wolkowysk, Poland. In 1750 he succeeded his influential father-in-law, Judah ben Eliezer (known as Yesod), and became a prominent rabbi in Vilna, Lithuania. Later Samuel was also appointed rabbi of Smorgon, then in Poland (now in Belarus). Avigdor was an outspoken opponent of Hasidism and was among the first signatories of 1772 declaration which excommunicated them.

In 1777, Ben Avigdor was ousted from his position as a result of accusations by some members that he wished to dominate the community by placing members of his family in leadership positions of the Vilna community. A compromise was reached the same year, but the dispute broke out again in 1782. The mater was placed before several courts of law, both Jewish and gentile, and even King Stanislaus Augustus of Poland was asked to intervene. The rabbi was finally dismissed from his post in 1785. As a result of the controversy, no one was thereafter appointed as the official communal rabbi of Vilna. The dispute greatly diminished the prestige of the community and the rabbinate. There were a number of such disputes in the 18th and 19th centuries as orthodox Jewish communities became increasingly secularized and members showed less respect for the rabbis. There were many problems in the selection, training and day-to-day functioning of the rabbis who for their part did not possess the tools to deal with the phenomenon.

Ben Avigdor became immortalized in Hebrew literature as 'ab beth din ha'aharon' ("the last head of the court").

Moishe (Moshe) Kulbak (1896-1937), writer and poet, regarded as one of the most important representatives of Yiddish poetry in the 20th century, born in Smorgon, Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire). He received Jewish traditional education at a local heder followed by studies at the Volozhin yeshiva. Despite being educated at strictly religious institutions, he began reading books by renowned Jewish authors like Mendele Moicher Sforim, Scholem Aleichem, and Isaac Leib Peretz.

When WW I broke out, a decree compelled his family to relocate inland, and he found himself in Minsk (now in Belarus). There, he worked as a teacher and made his initial attempts at writing. He favored the Yiddish language spoken by the common people over the more exclusive Hebrew. After the war, he returned to Vilnius (Vilana), where he published his first collection of songs and wrote his debut drama.

In 1920, he ventured to Berlin but struggled to establish himself there. Consequently, in 1923 he went back to Vilnius (then part of Poland) and secured a teaching position at a Jewish grammar school. Later, driven by political convictions, he made the decision to settle in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Minsk in 1928. This move allowed him to fully dedicate himself to his literary pursuits. He transitioned from a writing style heavily influenced by German Expressionism, characterized by a blend of realism and the irrational, sometimes taking on grotesque elements, to embrace Socialist Realism. He worked as an author and translator for literary magazines and the Academy of the Belarusian Soviet Republic. During this period, he embarked on his most significant prose work, the family chronicle of the Zelmenyaners.

Kulbak was associated with the Minsk Group, which disbanded in 1936. In 1937, during the Stalinist purges, he was arrested and charged with espionage and preparing sabotage. Following a staged trial, he was executed on the night of October 29/30, 1937. His works include Shirim (“Poems”, 1920), Die Shtot (“The Shtetl”, 1920), Lider (“Poems”, 1922), Meshiekh ben Efrayine (“Messiah son of Ephraim”, 1924), Montag (“Monday”, 1926), Zelminianer (“The Zelmenyaners: a family saga”, 1931), and Beniomine Maguidov (1937).

Ida Mett (Ida Lazarévitch-Gilman, born Ida Gilman) (1901-1973), revolutionary and communist anarchist, born in Smarhon (Smorgon), Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire). After completing her medical studies, Ida Mett moved to Moscow, where she became acquainted with the anarchist movement during the October 1917 Revolution. In 1924, she was apprehended by the newly established Soviet government on charges related to "anti-Soviet activities." Seeking refuge, she left for Paris in 1925, journeying through Poland and Berlin. In Paris she co-founded the publication Dielo Truda. 

Within the circle of Dielo Truda, Ida Mett encountered her partner Nicolas Lazarevitch, with whom she later co-edited La Liberation Syndicale. Their activities eventually led to their expulsion from France in 1928. They settled in Liège, Belgium. After 1931, Mett and Lazarevitch stayed in Barcelona, Spain, during the years before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. They re-entered France illegally n 1936. It was during late 1930s that Mett wrote La Commune de Cronstadt, focusing on the Kronstadt Sailors' Uprising in 1921, a book that she could publish only after the end of WW II. 

In 1940 she was incarcerated in Rieucros Camp in southern France, but managed to secure refugee status for her, her husband and their son Marc, albeit under vigilant supervision. After WW II she worked as a nurse at a clinic for Jewish children in Brunoy in the outskirts of Paris from 1948 to 1951. She later worked in the chemical industry as a skilled technical translator. Her works include Medicine in the USSR (1953), The Soviet School (1954), and The Russian Peasant in the Revolution and Post-Revolution (1968).  

Belarus

Рэспубліка Беларусь - Republic of Belarus
Also known as Byelorussia, Belorussia, White Russia
A country in eastern Europe, until 1991 part of the Soviet Union.

21st Century

Estimated Jewish population in 2018: 9,500 out of 9,500,000 (0.1%). Main umbrella organization of the Jewish organizations:

Union of Belarusian Jewish Organizations and Communities
Phone: 375 17 286 79 33
Fax: 375 17 286 79 33
Website: beljews.org

Daŭhinava

Даўгінава / Daŭhinava; in Polish and in Jewish sources Dołhinów, in Russian: Dolginova.
A small town in Belarus. Passed from Poland to Russia in 1793; within Poland from 1921 to 1945.

In 1847 there were 1,194 living in Dolhinow, and by 1897 their number increased to 2,559, out of a total population of 3,551. in 1921 there were 1,747 Jews living in the town, out of 2,671.

Anti-Jewish riots occurred in Dolhinow in 1896.

The Holocaust Period

The Jewish population of the town had increased to nearly 5,000 in 1941. From the outbreak of World War II in 1939 until the German-Soviet war the town was under Soviet occupation.

On June 28, 1941, the German army captured Dolhinow . In August 1941 22 men, including the rabbi of the community, were murdered by the Germans. On March 3, 1942, a ghetto was set up. During the "Shavuot" festival that year, the Germans murdered the entire Jewish community of Dolhinow, except for 500 craftsmen who were spared from immediate death. In that period groups of Jews fled to the forests and joined the partisans operating in Nalibocka Puszcza. The few remaining members of the community were murdered in September 1942.

About 200 Jews survived the war as soldiers of the Soviet army drafted in the spring of 1941, others as members of partisan units, and a number who had gone into hiding.
The Jewish community of Dolhinow was not re-established after the Holocaust.

Oshmyany

Ашмяны / Ashmyany; Polish: Oszmiana

A town in Grodno district, Belarus. Part of Poland before World War II.

Oshmyany, one of the oldest settlements in Lithuania, was granted municipal status in 1537. A Jewish community developed there at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1765 there were 376 Jewish poll-tax payers in Oshmyany and the surrounding villages. In1831, after a battle against Polish rebels, Russian soldiers set fire to Oshmyany and killed many of the town's inhabitants, including many Jews. In 1847 the community numbered 1,460, and by 1897 the number had increased to 3,808 (about 53 of the population). Jews earned their livelihood from small trade and crafts, essentially from tanning, shoemaking, tailoring, and carpentry. At the beginning of the 20th century most of the Jewish workers organized themselves into a trade union. There were seven synagogues in the town, three of them belonging to the unions of the tanners, shoemakers, and tailors. Prominent rabbis served the community during the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, among them R. Meir Michael Kahana (1833), R.
Mordecai B. Menachem Rosenblatt (author of "Aleh Chavatztzelet", 1891- 1906), and R. Judah Leib Fein (1906-1914). The great synagogue of Oshmyany was erected in 1902. In the battles between the Red army and the Polish army in 1920, many Jews fell victim to the fighting; between the two world wars (under Polish rule) the office of vice mayor was held by a Jewish delegate. During this period branches of all the Jewish parties were active in the town. The leading educational and cultural institutions were the "Tarbut" and "Yavneh Hebrew schools", the "CYSHO Yiddish School", a Hebrew library, and a drama circle. Between the years 1922 and 1925 a Jewish agricultural cooperative with 30 members functioned in the surroundings of Oshmyany.

On June 25, 1941, three days after the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, the Germans invaded Oshmyany. On July 25 they ordered all male Jews to assemble in the square. The assembled, which numbered about 700, were taken to Bartel and murdered. In October 1941, a ghetto was established, which became overcrowded as Jews from the neighboring towns of Olshan, Smorgon, and Krawo were brought in, and disease and hunger took many lives. On June 16, 1942, about 350 youths were transferred to a camp in Miligany. In October the Germans announced that too many Jews were still living in the ghetto and that the population must be decreased, which meant extermination for some of its occupants. Receiving the information, the Judenrat in Vilna claimed that if it performed the Aktion the number of victims would be reduced. Headed by salek Dresler, members of the Jewish police participated in the aktion on October 27, 1942, making their selektion and kidnapping more than 500 Jews, who were taken in the direction of Oglyovo, about 4 mi. (7 km.) From Oshmyana, and murdered there.

This episode roused the Jews against both the Judenrat and the Vilna Jewish police. Jacob Gens, head of the Judenrat in Vilna, took full responsibility for the Aktion, claiming that by sacrificing part of the Jewish population there was a chance to save the rest. Early in 1943 an underground organization was established in the ghetto, and its members left for the forests to join the partisans. On April 28, 1943, the ghetto was liquidated. Some of its 2,500 inhabitants were transferred to the Vilna ghetto, some were deported to labor camps in the vicinity, and others were killed at Ponary. After World War II Jewish life in Oshmyany did not fully revive. In 1965 there were some 25 Jewish families living there, most of whom had not previously been residents of the town. A monument to Jewish martyrs murdered by the Nazis, erected outside the town, was repeatedly desecrated. In 1970 some 300 families from Oshmyany lived in Eretz Israel.

Maladzyechna

Russian: Molodechno
Polish: Molodeczno

A city in the Minsk Voblast, Belarus

Maladzyechna was part of the Russian Empire from 1793 until 1920, during which time it was known as Molodechno. It became part of Poland and was known as Molodeczno. In the wake of World War II (1939-1945) it became part of the Belarussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Since 1991 it has been part of the Republic of Belarus.

For purposes of clarity, this article will refer to the city as Maladzyechna throughout.

The Great Synagogue building was converted into government offices. A number of Jewish buildings have remained standing.

HISTORY

The Jewish community of Maladzyechna numbered 251 in 1847. By 1897 the Jewish population had increased to 1,105 (46% of the total population).

The construction of a railroad in 1905 greatly improved the socioeconomic standing of Maladzyechna’s Jewish residents, and the community began to thrive. One result of this economic boom was the construction of the Great Synagogue in 1906; a Hasidic prayer house was built a few years later. A government school for Jewish boys was established, and included a special vocational division as well as the option for students to board at the school. The school was destroyed after the Polish annexation of 1921, at which point Jewish children were educated in the Hebrew-language Tarbut school.

THE HOLOCAUST

Maladzyechna was occupied by the Red Army on September 17, 1939 following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. After the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, Maladzyechna was occupied by the Germans. Fifty Jews were shot immediately after the occupation. Hundreds more of Maladzyechna’s Jews were killed in October, while those who remained were taken to a barn and burned alive in December 1941.

POSTWAR

Jewish life in Maladzyechna was not revived after the war.
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The Jewish Community of Smarhon

Smarhon

Смаргонь / Smarhon; in Russian: Smorgon

A city in Grodno Oblast, Belarus. The town passed from Poland to Russia in 1793; between 1921 and 1945 within independent Poland. From the 16th century until the second half of the 19th century, the town was the private property of the Princes of Radziwill.

21st Century

There were a few Jews living in Smorgon in 2009.

History

Jewish settlement in Smorgon is believed to date from the early 17th century. From 1628 the Jews of Smorgon paid their taxes to the community administration of Grodno. In 1631 the community of Smorgon became the center of a galil (province) within the framework of the Council of Lithuania. The autonomous status of the community was confirmed in 1651. In 1765 there were 649 Jews in the community of Smorgon who paid the poll tax. During the 1830s a Jewish agricultural settlement, Karka, with 30 farmsteads, was established near the town. On the eve of World War I, 40 Jewish families there worked on the land. In 1847 there were 1,621 Jews living in Smorgon.

A tanning industry was begun in the town as a result of Jewish initiative in the 1860s. In addition to this, the Jews of the town earned their livelihoods from carpentry, the knitting of socks, the baking of bagels which were famous throughout Russia, retail trade, and peddling. The Bund gained many adherents among the workers of Smorgon. From 1899 a Zionist organization was active in the town and in 1905 a branch of the Zionist Socialist Workers' Party was established. In 1897 there were 6,743 Jews living in Smorgon (76% of the population).

On the eve of World War I, there were two battei midrash, seven synagogues, three elementary yeshivot, and a Jewish hospital in the town. A section of the town's Jewish population were chabad chasidim. In 1915, during World War I, many of the Jews in Smorgon were expelled to the Russian interior. Jewish refugee tanners from Smorgon founded the tanning industries in Kharkov, Rostov, and Bogorodsk. When Smorgon reverted to independent Poland after World War I the Jewish refugees began to return to their destroyed houses.

Between the two world wars, a Hebrew tarbut school, a drama circle (Bamati), sports clubs, Zionist youth circles, and branches of Po'alei Zion, He-Chalutz and Ha-Shomer Hatsair functioned in the town.

The spiritual leaders of the community during the early second half of the 18th century included the rabbi of the community Rabbi Chayyim Cohen. In 1827-28 the town rabbi was the renowned Manasseh B. Joseph of Ilya, a native of Smorgon. Subsequently, a dynasty of rabbis descended from Rabbi Leib Shapira established themselves in the town. From 1910 to 1917 Judah Leib Gordin, the author of Teshuvat Yehudah, held rabbinical office in the town. Nahum Slouschz, the author Aaron Abraham Kabak, the Yiddish poet Moshe Kulbak, and David Raziel, commander of the Irgun Tzevai Le'ummi, were natives of Smorgon.
 

The Holocaust Period

In September 1939 the Red Army entered the town and a Soviet administration was established until the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in June 1941, when the Germans occupied the town. The Germans established two ghettos in different places there. In the summer of 1942 some Jews were sent to Kovno (Kaunas) and shared the fate of that community while the others were sent to Ponary near Vilna, and were killed there.

 

Postwar

The Jewish community of Smorgon was not reconstituted after the war. An organization of former residents of Smorgon was formed in Israel.

Written by researchers of ANU Museum of the Jewish People
Menashe Ben Porath

Menashe Ben Porath (1767-1831) Haskala forerunner. Born in Smorgonie, he was a child genius and received a talmudic education from his father who was a dayyan. In 1784 he married and went to live in the home of his father-in-law in Ilya. He was a student and intimate of the Vilna Gaon but gradually moved towards greater rationalism and challenged certain talmudic writings as well as Kabbalah. He advocated modernized education curricula and called for modifications in halakha. Menashe was socially aware and called for justice for the poor and wanted the occupational emphasis of the Jews to be on crafts not trades. He was persecuted for his ideas and threatened with excommunication. He wrote many works but as the rabbis refused their approbration it was difficult for his works to be published and indeed some of them were burnt. In 1827 the Smorgonie community elected him their rabbi but he resigned after a year. He died in a cholera epidemic. Most of Menashe's works were destroyed in a great fire in Ilya in 1884. He was posthumously much admired by the maskilim.

Abraham Sutzkever

Abraham Sutzkever (1913-2010), poet

Born in Smargon, Belarus (the part of the Russian Empire), into a well-known Hassidic family. When he was two years old his family escaped from the invading Germans to Siberia. In 1920 the family returned and settled in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Sutzkever was educated. He studied at the University of Vilnius and in the early 1930s his talent was recognized by the poet Leizer Wolf, member of the Young Vilna group. During World War II, Sutzkever escaped the Vilna ghetto and joined the partisans. In 1947 he emigrated to Eretz Israel.
Sutzkever’s books of poetry include Lider (Poems, 1937), Valdiks (Forests, 1940), Die Festung (Fortress, 1945), Lider fun Geto (Songs of the Ghetto, 1946), Yidishe Gas (Jewish Street, 1948), and Geheymshot (Secret Town, 1948). Numerous poems by him appeared in the Yiddish literary quarterly Di Goldene Keyt that he edited from 1949.

Moshe Koussevitzky

Moshe Koussevitzky (1899-1966), cantor, born in Smorgon, near Vilna, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). He and his family spent the years of World War I in Rostov-on-Don and then returned to Vilna. There he began to sing in the choir of Toharat Kodesh synagogue where the famous cantor Abraham Moshe Berenstein officiated. He became leading tenor in the choir and one day, during Sabbath service, he replaced one of the other tenors in a solo piece. His performance was a great success and the public started to ask for him to appear as a cantor on his own. When the synagogue officials refused, he began to sing every Sabbath in a different synagogue in Vilna.
After he was well known in Vilna, he was appointed chief cantor of the famous Tlomacka Street synagogue in Warsaw. In 1928 he first appeared in Antwerp, singing before an enthusiastic crowd. This was the first of his many performances in Antwerp and Brussels. He toured all over Europe, North and South America, South Africa and Israel. His singing was compared to that of the great Gershon Sirota. He died in New York and was buried in Jerusalem.

Samuel Ben Avigdor
Samuel Ben Avigdor (1720-1793), rabbi. His first position was at Wolkowysk, Poland. In 1750 he succeeded his influential father-in-law, Judah ben Eliezer (known as Yesod), and became a prominent rabbi in Vilna, Lithuania. Later Samuel was also appointed rabbi of Smorgon, then in Poland (now in Belarus). Avigdor was an outspoken opponent of Hasidism and was among the first signatories of 1772 declaration which excommunicated them.

In 1777, Ben Avigdor was ousted from his position as a result of accusations by some members that he wished to dominate the community by placing members of his family in leadership positions of the Vilna community. A compromise was reached the same year, but the dispute broke out again in 1782. The mater was placed before several courts of law, both Jewish and gentile, and even King Stanislaus Augustus of Poland was asked to intervene. The rabbi was finally dismissed from his post in 1785. As a result of the controversy, no one was thereafter appointed as the official communal rabbi of Vilna. The dispute greatly diminished the prestige of the community and the rabbinate. There were a number of such disputes in the 18th and 19th centuries as orthodox Jewish communities became increasingly secularized and members showed less respect for the rabbis. There were many problems in the selection, training and day-to-day functioning of the rabbis who for their part did not possess the tools to deal with the phenomenon.

Ben Avigdor became immortalized in Hebrew literature as 'ab beth din ha'aharon' ("the last head of the court").
Moishe Kulbak

Moishe (Moshe) Kulbak (1896-1937), writer and poet, regarded as one of the most important representatives of Yiddish poetry in the 20th century, born in Smorgon, Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire). He received Jewish traditional education at a local heder followed by studies at the Volozhin yeshiva. Despite being educated at strictly religious institutions, he began reading books by renowned Jewish authors like Mendele Moicher Sforim, Scholem Aleichem, and Isaac Leib Peretz.

When WW I broke out, a decree compelled his family to relocate inland, and he found himself in Minsk (now in Belarus). There, he worked as a teacher and made his initial attempts at writing. He favored the Yiddish language spoken by the common people over the more exclusive Hebrew. After the war, he returned to Vilnius (Vilana), where he published his first collection of songs and wrote his debut drama.

In 1920, he ventured to Berlin but struggled to establish himself there. Consequently, in 1923 he went back to Vilnius (then part of Poland) and secured a teaching position at a Jewish grammar school. Later, driven by political convictions, he made the decision to settle in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Minsk in 1928. This move allowed him to fully dedicate himself to his literary pursuits. He transitioned from a writing style heavily influenced by German Expressionism, characterized by a blend of realism and the irrational, sometimes taking on grotesque elements, to embrace Socialist Realism. He worked as an author and translator for literary magazines and the Academy of the Belarusian Soviet Republic. During this period, he embarked on his most significant prose work, the family chronicle of the Zelmenyaners.

Kulbak was associated with the Minsk Group, which disbanded in 1936. In 1937, during the Stalinist purges, he was arrested and charged with espionage and preparing sabotage. Following a staged trial, he was executed on the night of October 29/30, 1937. His works include Shirim (“Poems”, 1920), Die Shtot (“The Shtetl”, 1920), Lider (“Poems”, 1922), Meshiekh ben Efrayine (“Messiah son of Ephraim”, 1924), Montag (“Monday”, 1926), Zelminianer (“The Zelmenyaners: a family saga”, 1931), and Beniomine Maguidov (1937).

Ida Mett

Ida Mett (Ida Lazarévitch-Gilman, born Ida Gilman) (1901-1973), revolutionary and communist anarchist, born in Smarhon (Smorgon), Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire). After completing her medical studies, Ida Mett moved to Moscow, where she became acquainted with the anarchist movement during the October 1917 Revolution. In 1924, she was apprehended by the newly established Soviet government on charges related to "anti-Soviet activities." Seeking refuge, she left for Paris in 1925, journeying through Poland and Berlin. In Paris she co-founded the publication Dielo Truda. 

Within the circle of Dielo Truda, Ida Mett encountered her partner Nicolas Lazarevitch, with whom she later co-edited La Liberation Syndicale. Their activities eventually led to their expulsion from France in 1928. They settled in Liège, Belgium. After 1931, Mett and Lazarevitch stayed in Barcelona, Spain, during the years before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. They re-entered France illegally n 1936. It was during late 1930s that Mett wrote La Commune de Cronstadt, focusing on the Kronstadt Sailors' Uprising in 1921, a book that she could publish only after the end of WW II. 

In 1940 she was incarcerated in Rieucros Camp in southern France, but managed to secure refugee status for her, her husband and their son Marc, albeit under vigilant supervision. After WW II she worked as a nurse at a clinic for Jewish children in Brunoy in the outskirts of Paris from 1948 to 1951. She later worked in the chemical industry as a skilled technical translator. Her works include Medicine in the USSR (1953), The Soviet School (1954), and The Russian Peasant in the Revolution and Post-Revolution (1968).  

Belarus

Belarus

Рэспубліка Беларусь - Republic of Belarus
Also known as Byelorussia, Belorussia, White Russia
A country in eastern Europe, until 1991 part of the Soviet Union.

21st Century

Estimated Jewish population in 2018: 9,500 out of 9,500,000 (0.1%). Main umbrella organization of the Jewish organizations:

Union of Belarusian Jewish Organizations and Communities
Phone: 375 17 286 79 33
Fax: 375 17 286 79 33
Website: beljews.org

Daŭhinava

Daŭhinava

Даўгінава / Daŭhinava; in Polish and in Jewish sources Dołhinów, in Russian: Dolginova.
A small town in Belarus. Passed from Poland to Russia in 1793; within Poland from 1921 to 1945.

In 1847 there were 1,194 living in Dolhinow, and by 1897 their number increased to 2,559, out of a total population of 3,551. in 1921 there were 1,747 Jews living in the town, out of 2,671.

Anti-Jewish riots occurred in Dolhinow in 1896.

The Holocaust Period

The Jewish population of the town had increased to nearly 5,000 in 1941. From the outbreak of World War II in 1939 until the German-Soviet war the town was under Soviet occupation.

On June 28, 1941, the German army captured Dolhinow . In August 1941 22 men, including the rabbi of the community, were murdered by the Germans. On March 3, 1942, a ghetto was set up. During the "Shavuot" festival that year, the Germans murdered the entire Jewish community of Dolhinow, except for 500 craftsmen who were spared from immediate death. In that period groups of Jews fled to the forests and joined the partisans operating in Nalibocka Puszcza. The few remaining members of the community were murdered in September 1942.

About 200 Jews survived the war as soldiers of the Soviet army drafted in the spring of 1941, others as members of partisan units, and a number who had gone into hiding.
The Jewish community of Dolhinow was not re-established after the Holocaust.

Oshmyany

Oshmyany

Ашмяны / Ashmyany; Polish: Oszmiana

A town in Grodno district, Belarus. Part of Poland before World War II.

Oshmyany, one of the oldest settlements in Lithuania, was granted municipal status in 1537. A Jewish community developed there at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1765 there were 376 Jewish poll-tax payers in Oshmyany and the surrounding villages. In1831, after a battle against Polish rebels, Russian soldiers set fire to Oshmyany and killed many of the town's inhabitants, including many Jews. In 1847 the community numbered 1,460, and by 1897 the number had increased to 3,808 (about 53 of the population). Jews earned their livelihood from small trade and crafts, essentially from tanning, shoemaking, tailoring, and carpentry. At the beginning of the 20th century most of the Jewish workers organized themselves into a trade union. There were seven synagogues in the town, three of them belonging to the unions of the tanners, shoemakers, and tailors. Prominent rabbis served the community during the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, among them R. Meir Michael Kahana (1833), R.
Mordecai B. Menachem Rosenblatt (author of "Aleh Chavatztzelet", 1891- 1906), and R. Judah Leib Fein (1906-1914). The great synagogue of Oshmyany was erected in 1902. In the battles between the Red army and the Polish army in 1920, many Jews fell victim to the fighting; between the two world wars (under Polish rule) the office of vice mayor was held by a Jewish delegate. During this period branches of all the Jewish parties were active in the town. The leading educational and cultural institutions were the "Tarbut" and "Yavneh Hebrew schools", the "CYSHO Yiddish School", a Hebrew library, and a drama circle. Between the years 1922 and 1925 a Jewish agricultural cooperative with 30 members functioned in the surroundings of Oshmyany.

On June 25, 1941, three days after the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, the Germans invaded Oshmyany. On July 25 they ordered all male Jews to assemble in the square. The assembled, which numbered about 700, were taken to Bartel and murdered. In October 1941, a ghetto was established, which became overcrowded as Jews from the neighboring towns of Olshan, Smorgon, and Krawo were brought in, and disease and hunger took many lives. On June 16, 1942, about 350 youths were transferred to a camp in Miligany. In October the Germans announced that too many Jews were still living in the ghetto and that the population must be decreased, which meant extermination for some of its occupants. Receiving the information, the Judenrat in Vilna claimed that if it performed the Aktion the number of victims would be reduced. Headed by salek Dresler, members of the Jewish police participated in the aktion on October 27, 1942, making their selektion and kidnapping more than 500 Jews, who were taken in the direction of Oglyovo, about 4 mi. (7 km.) From Oshmyana, and murdered there.

This episode roused the Jews against both the Judenrat and the Vilna Jewish police. Jacob Gens, head of the Judenrat in Vilna, took full responsibility for the Aktion, claiming that by sacrificing part of the Jewish population there was a chance to save the rest. Early in 1943 an underground organization was established in the ghetto, and its members left for the forests to join the partisans. On April 28, 1943, the ghetto was liquidated. Some of its 2,500 inhabitants were transferred to the Vilna ghetto, some were deported to labor camps in the vicinity, and others were killed at Ponary. After World War II Jewish life in Oshmyany did not fully revive. In 1965 there were some 25 Jewish families living there, most of whom had not previously been residents of the town. A monument to Jewish martyrs murdered by the Nazis, erected outside the town, was repeatedly desecrated. In 1970 some 300 families from Oshmyany lived in Eretz Israel.

Maladzyechna
Maladzyechna

Russian: Molodechno
Polish: Molodeczno

A city in the Minsk Voblast, Belarus

Maladzyechna was part of the Russian Empire from 1793 until 1920, during which time it was known as Molodechno. It became part of Poland and was known as Molodeczno. In the wake of World War II (1939-1945) it became part of the Belarussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Since 1991 it has been part of the Republic of Belarus.

For purposes of clarity, this article will refer to the city as Maladzyechna throughout.

The Great Synagogue building was converted into government offices. A number of Jewish buildings have remained standing.

HISTORY

The Jewish community of Maladzyechna numbered 251 in 1847. By 1897 the Jewish population had increased to 1,105 (46% of the total population).

The construction of a railroad in 1905 greatly improved the socioeconomic standing of Maladzyechna’s Jewish residents, and the community began to thrive. One result of this economic boom was the construction of the Great Synagogue in 1906; a Hasidic prayer house was built a few years later. A government school for Jewish boys was established, and included a special vocational division as well as the option for students to board at the school. The school was destroyed after the Polish annexation of 1921, at which point Jewish children were educated in the Hebrew-language Tarbut school.

THE HOLOCAUST

Maladzyechna was occupied by the Red Army on September 17, 1939 following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. After the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, Maladzyechna was occupied by the Germans. Fifty Jews were shot immediately after the occupation. Hundreds more of Maladzyechna’s Jews were killed in October, while those who remained were taken to a barn and burned alive in December 1941.

POSTWAR

Jewish life in Maladzyechna was not revived after the war.