The Jewish Community of Mogilev

Original recording from The St. Petersburg School: Music for Cello and Piano Produced by Beit Hatfutsot in 1998.

The title Fantastischer Tanz - Fantastic Dance op.6 (1919) for piano trio was originally given in Yiddish. A dedication of the work was added in German to the composer's father, B.L. Rosowsky, as well as a note stating that the folk theme was notated by Kisselgoff in Lubavitch, in the region of Mogilev. The theme is based upon a Gypsy mode of an augmented second in each of its tetrachords. The piece opens "misterioso, molto tranquillo," that is, mysterious and tranquil, with solo phrases of each of the instruments. They join in the allegro, which is the dance on the theme notated by Kisselgoff. The theme undergoes many transformations, all rather virtuosic (it even becomes a march), until it suddenly stops. The piece ends slowly and softly.

Text by Dr. Avner Bahat, originally published by Beit Hatfutsot in The St. Petersburg School: Music for Cello and Piano CD booklet.

The city of Worms.
Detail from a mural made in 1740
in the wooden synagogue
of Mogilov, Belorussia, 1923.
Copy made by E. Lissitzky, from:
"Rimon" Journal, III, 1923.
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot)

Issachar Behr Falkensohn (1746-1817), poet, born in Salantai and tried to work in retail trade but when his entire stock was stolen from him he made his way to Berlin where he was introduced to Moses Mendelssohn. and came under the patronage of Daniel Itzig. He now received a broad secular education and as soon as he mastered German began to write poetry. His book, Gedichte von einem pohlnischen Juden made an immediate impression and was reviewed by Goethe. Behr then moved to Halle where he graduated in medicine. He practiced as a physician in Hasenpoth in Courland (now Aizpute, Latvia) and Mohilev and little is known of his later life.

Issai (Schaia) Schur (1875-1941), mathematician, best known as one of the originators of the representation theory of groups, born in Mogilev, Russian Empire (now Mohilyov, Belarus). At the age of 13 he moved to Liepaja (now in Latvia) and attended the local high school, and then continued his studies at the University of Berlin, Germany. In 1903 he became a lecturer at the University of Berlin, holding this position until 1913, when he was named associate professor at the University of Bonn. He returned to Berlin teaching at the local university from 1916 to 1935, when following the rise to power of the Nazis, he was dismissed from the university, and after a short time later he was expulsed from the Prussian Academy of Sciences. In 1939 he managed to leave Germany, and after a few weeks in Bern, Switzerland, he immigrated to the Land of Israel settling in Tel Aviv. His research was focused on representations of the full linear group, of symmetrical and alternating groups, representations through fractional linear substitutions (introducing Schur multipliers) as well as through collineations. He introduced the Schur index and the Schur's lemma, and contributed to the theory of integral equations. Schur is the author of several articles published in Mathematische Annalen and Mathematische Zeitschrift.

Kotzman
 

Jewish sources: Kitzman

Ukranian: Кіцмань (Kitsman')

Russian: Кицмань (Kitsman')

Romanian: Coţmani

German: Kotzman

Yiddish: קיצמאַן (Kitzman)

Polish: Kocman

Other names: Kicmań, Kotzmann, Cotman, Cozmeni, Kosman, Kizman, Kozmeny

A city in north Bukovina, district of Chernivtsi, Ukraine.


The region of Kotzman had belonged in the past to the Princedom of Moldavia, but it was ruled alternately also by the Poles and the Turks. In 1775 the region was annexed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and at the end of World War I it was given to Romania and remained within its borders throughout the period between the two world wars.
 

21st Century

The gravestones in the Jewish cemetery of Kotzman are from the 19-20th centuries and mostly in their original location. Half or more burial stones are broken and no longer in upright position. Mass graves seem not to exist. The cemetery is matter of some overgrowth.

 

History

Tombstones at the Jewish cemetery testify that Jews had come to the place already at the end of the 17th century, shortly after the establishment of the town by the Ottomans. In the census of the Russian military administration in 1774, one Jew by the name of Iutco is mentioned at Kotzman.

Several Jews from Galicia tried to settle in the place at the beginning of the 19th century but they were thwarted by the Austrian authorities. A stable settlement of Jews was founded only at the end of the century and in 1910 it numbered 666 persons. In 1890 the community of Kotzman was one of the 15 Jewish communities recognized by the authorities, for which identical regulations were approved. These 15 communities became central communities, to which Jews living in smaller places in the area were affiliated. In the 20th century Kotzman was a sub-district town, to which some 30 villages in the neighborhood were attached for administrative purposes.

The Jews of Kotzman had two synagogues and a prayer house, which served also as a heder (school) and a Talmud torah. There was also in Kotzman an additional heder for small children and a bath house with a mikveh (purification bath) in it. Taxes to the community were assessed in accordance with the ability to pay. The hevra kaddisha (burial society) and a charity fund were operated by volunteers. Charity was conducted in due secrecy, particularly by women. The poor of the community were duly provided with meals for the Sabbath. The bikkur holim society extended medical help to the needy. The community’s rabbi acted also as a dayan (religious judge). Ritual slaughterers and melamdim (heder teachers) were brought by the community from outside, to live there.

The Jews of Kotzman were influenced by two opposing movements - Hasidism, particularly the Hasidism of Vizhnitz, and the enlightenment. Almost all the Jewish children of Kotzman attended state elementary schools, and there was also a large secondary school, with a boarding facility, which was attended only by boys, mostly Romanian and Ukrainian. About 5% of the Jewish boys of Kotzman and the vicinity went to this school. The girls acquired secondary education as external students. A small number of children studied at the Vizhnitz yeshiva. By request of the rabbi, Jewish pupils were exempt from writing on the Sabbath. Kotzman also had a large agriclutural school, to which Jews were not accepted.

In the period between the two world wars, in the years 1926-1936, Rabbi Baruch Hager of the Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasty served as the community’s rabbi. His influence was felt in every sphere of Jewish life and he was appreciated also by the non-Jewish community. Rabbi Hager founded a Talmud torah, which occupied a whole building, in which children from Kotzman and the vicinity studied. The teacher of the Beth Jacob school for girls came from another place. When Rabbi Baruch Hager left the town, Rabbi Asher Rubin replaced him and he was the last rabbi of Kotzman.

The Jews of Kotzman engaged mainly in the trade in agricultural products, which they bought in the neighbouring villages, in light industry, and in crafts. Almost all of the professional people of Kotzman were Jewish.

Kotzman’s means of transportation were good. A railway station connected the town with the Polish border, with industrial areas, and with Cernauti, the capital of the district. The trade connection with Cernauti was maintained also by carts. Most of the shops in the main street, that ran through the length of the town, were owned by Jews and kept closed on Saturdays. Business was done mostly on Wednesday, the weekly market day, which attracted farmers and merchants from near and distant areas alike. In addition there was also in Kotzman a cattle market. The shops and inns were usually crowded. The merchants and craftsmen of Kotzman took part also in market days held at neighbouring small towns.

Jews owned groceries, textile shops, footwear shops, candy shops, etc. There was also at Koptzman light industry, a factory for building bricks and roof tiles, an oil press for extracting sunflower oil, a large flour-mill, and a factory making praying shawls. Two installations were making soda water, and two bakeries had their own bread shops. Two small plants for making dairy products were founded at the beginning of the 1930’s and they served costomers also in Cernauti. Near Kotzman were also a large factory for processing wood and an installation for refining beet sugar. A few Jews were engaged in growing the sugar beet and marketing it. A number of families kept a milking cow, for their own consumption of the milk and for sale.


The Holocaust Period

Following the pre-war agreement between Germany and the USSR. In August 1939, northern Bukovina was annexed to the USSR in June 1940 and the Soviets entered Kotzman. The Zionist movement went undergrouind and activists were imprisoned and exiled.

In September 1940 General Antonescu came into power in Romania and the country joined Germany as its ally in the war. When Germany attacked the USSR in June 1941 the region of Kotzman was occupied and the Romaians took over the town. Edicts against the Jews followed immediately, among them the order to wear the identifying yellow badge. The first Jewish victims were an adult and a child. A week later a group of SS officers arrived and a German unit put to death ten Jews. They were included in a list that had been given the Germans by a local Ukrainian lawyer. Among the victims was also the Rabbi Asher Rubin.

The expulsion of the Jews from Kotzman in October 1941 (Sukkoth 5702) was carried out after a short notice of only 24 hours. The local authority provided horse carts and the 560 expelled Jews were carried to a railway station in one of the villages in the area, where they were loaded on goods wagons. Three days later they reached Ataki in Bessarabia, on the river Dnister, which served as a base for the deprotations to Transnistria. From Ataki they were taken on a ferry to the other bank of the river, to the town of Mogilev. On their way, the deportees were subject to beating and confiscation of valuables by their guards, the German troops and the Ukrainian collaborators. Only a few families of the deportees from Kotzman remained at Mogilev. All the others were further moved in convoys to various places all over Transnistria. Many died on the way, some were murdered by the escorts. Most of the Jews from Kotzman were concentrated in the villages around Vinnitsa. Knowledge of the Ukrainian language helped them to communicate with the local population.

From the day of the expulsion from Kotzman (October 1941) until the end of 1942 most of the deportees died of ill treatment and murders, hunger and disease.

Following the defeat of the Germans and the liberation of the region by the Red Army at the end of 1944 all the survivors returned to Kotzman. Some found their houses ruined by fire, others found the houses occupied by the Russian authorities, and the property they had left had been looted by the Germans during their absence. As a result, only a few were able to reinstate themselves in their former homes. Jewish men were mobilized into the Red Army, which continued fighting the Germans in Europe.
 

Postwar

When the Soviet authorites allowed in 1946 to cross the border into Romania, all the survivors of Kotzman seized the opportunity and crossed over. In Romania they integrated in the Aliyah to Eretz Israel and eventually reached Israel. A few emigrated to the west and overseas.

Babruysk

Belarusian: Бабру́йск / Yiddish:באברויסק, Bobroisk / Also known as Bobruisk, Babrujsk

A city in eastern Belarus. Babruysk became part of the Russian Empire after the Second Partition of Poland in 1793.

21^ST CENTURY

In 2016 the ruins of a former synagogue were returned for use by Babruysk’s Jewish community.

HISTORY

Jewish settlement in Babruysk is first mentioned at the end of the 17^th century. Tax records from 1766 indicate that there were 395 Jewish taxpayers living in Babruysk that year. Once the city became part of Russia, the community grew.

A large fortress was built in Babruysk at the beginning of the 19^th century, and supplying the troops there became a major Jewish occupation. Towards the middle of the 19^th century Jews also began working in the lumber business, as Babruysk became an important lumber center where timber from the adjacent forests was rafted or otherwise sent to southern Russia or the Baltic ports.

There were numerous yeshivahs in Babruysk. Distinguished rabbis who officiated there included leaders of the Chasidic sect of Chabad, including Mordecai Baruch Ettinger, Hillel of Paritch, and Shemariah Noah Schneerson. Misnagedim (opponents of Chasidism) were also active, including Jacob David Willowski (Ridbaz) and Raphael Shapiro (who later became the head of the Volozhin yeshiva). Later, the Hebrew author M. Rabinson served as the government appointed rabbi beginning in 1911.

Toward the end of the 19th century Babruysk became a center of cultural and political activity for Belarusian Jewry. The publishing house of Jacob Cohen Ginsburg became celebrated throughout Russia. The cheder, which was established in 1900, provided comprehensive Hebrew instruction and did much to raise the standard of Hebrew education. A popular Jewish library was also opened. Babruysk was also home to a particularly large and active branch of the Bund; in 1898 its underground printing press was seized by the police.

The Jewish population numbered 4,702 in 1847. By 1861 the population had grown to 8,861. In 1897 there were 20,760 Jews living in Babruysk (60% of the total population).

After World War I (1914-1918), the Jewish population suffered from the frequent changes of government during the Russian Revolution (1917) and the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921). This had a dampening effect on the city’s Jewish activities. Nonetheless, Babruysk was still home to an active printing press, and continued to develop community institutions. Jacob Ginsburg and other publishers continued to print prayer books and other religious publications in Babruysk until 1928. Indeed, the last work of Jewish religious literature to be published in the Soviet Union, Yagdil Torah, was printed in Babruysk. Additionally, a network of 12 Yiddish schools was established in Babruysk after the 1917 Revolution, which enrolled 3,000 students. These schools functioned until 1939.

In 1914 Babruysk’s Jewish population was 25,876 (61% of the total population). Though the Jewish population dropped to 21,558 in 1926 (42% of the total population), by 1939 it had risen again to 26,703.

THE HOLOCAUST

Babruysk was occupied by the Germans on June 28^th 1941. Approximately 7,000 Jews succeeded in escaping, including small groups that fled to the forests and joined Soviet partisan units.  Those who were left in the city were subject to persecution and violence. 3,500 Jews were killed at the beginning of July, and 800 men were killed on August 5^th after supposedly being taken to a labor camp.

A ghetto was established in an open field near the airport. On November 7, 1941, 20,000 Jews were taken from the ghetto to their deaths. Another 5,281 Jews were later executed because they refused to wear the yellow Star of David and report to forced labor.

POSTWAR

The Jewish population of Babruysk increased after the war, and was estimated at 30,000 in the 1970s, and 10,000 in 1989.

The city’s last remaining synagogue was closed in 1959, but there were said to be underground prayer services. The city did have a Jewish cemetery. In 1988 the Mendele Moykher-Sforim Jewish Culture Club was established.

After the fall of the Soviet Union (1991) the Jewish population of Belarus dropped by over 75%, as most of the Jews immigrated. Eventually, however, Jewish life began to revive. Community institutions were established, including a synagogue, a day school, and a Sunday School. Kosher chicken also became available.

Notable members of Babruysk’s Jewish community included the author Pauline Wengeroff; the rabbi and writer I. Nissenbaum; the leader of Labor Zionism Berl Katznelson; the Israeli poet, writer, and translater David Shimoni; and the Yiddish poet Yosef Tunkel.

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