HAZAN Origin of surname

Victoria Hazan (1896-1995), singer and oud player, born into a family of cantors as Victoria Ninio in Salihli, north-east of Izmir, Turkey (then in the Ottoman Empire). She moved to the United States after the end of WW I, where she married. Initially she sang in her synagogue for community audiences, but later she also was persuaded to make recordings of different kinds of Sefardi music which became very popular with Jewish communities in America. Hazan sang and recorded songs in Turkish, Greek, Ladino, Armenian, French, and Hebrew.

Yaacov Hazan (1899-1992), politician and social activist born in Brest-Litovsk, Belarus (then in the Russian Empire). He studied in a Heder and a Hebrew high school. In 1915, he was among the founders of the "Hebrew Scouts movement" in Poland (later to become "Hashomer Hatzair"), where he was also one of first members of "HeHalutz". He studied at Warsaw Polytechnic before immigrating to Mandate Palestine in 1923, where he worked in an orchard in Hadera and in drying swamps in the Beit She'an valley.

In 1926, he joined Kibbutz "Hashomer HaTzair B", which would later be named Mishmar HaEmek. Hazan became a central figure in the left wing Kibbutz Artzi movement and actively participated in turning the movement into a political party later to be known as Mapam. He served in various positions of the Histadrut and the Zionist movement and major Yishuv institutions. Along with Meir Yaari, he led HaShomer Hatzair, Kibbutz Artzi and Mapam for some forty years during which time the movement and the party were closely aligned with the aims of communism and the USSR.

In 1948 he was one of the founders of Mapam and became one of the main supporters of the party's pro-Soviet stand. He identified with the Soviet Union and the global communist movement in every aspect, except its attitude toward Zionism. On Stalin’s death, he wrote an emotional eulogy about him for "Al HaMishmar", the party's daily newspaper. After the Prague Trials, he changed his mind and joined forces with Yaari to keep Moshe Sneh, who maintained his pro-Soviet opinion, out of the party. Hazan was a Mapam (and later Alignment) MK from 1949 to 1973. In the fourth Knesset he was a member of the Knesset committee and in the fifth to the seventh a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. He supported collaboration with Mapai, the more middle of the road socialist party and the establishment of the Alignment in 1968. After the Six-Day War he played an important part in formulating Mapam's dovish positions.

Eliyahu Yitzhak Shemesh Hazan (known as Hacham Eliyahu Hazan) (? – 1938), rabbi and cantor, born in Baghdad, Iraq (then part of the Ottoman Empire). After 1880 he became head of the beit midrash in the town of Hillah in Iraq. From 1906 he served as rabbi of the Baghdadi Jewish community of Hong Kong, holding that position until 1920, when he became rabbi of the Baghdadi Jewish community of Shanghai, China. Hazan immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1930 and settled in Jerusalem. His writings have been published in Yad Eliyahu – a collection of responsa.          

Supraśl 

A town in the Bialystok district in Podlaskie Voivodeship, north-east Poland.

Suprasl, on the banks of a river of that name, is situated sixteen kilometers north-east of Bialystok, surrounded by virgin forests. The settlement was founded in the 16th century, and a church and a monastery were built there by the first settlers. On a map from the end of the sixteenth century, the place already appears as a town. It became known for its printing press which was established next to the monastery at the end of the 17th century, printing documents on the subjects of religion and language, in Latin and Polish. It was noted particularly for the Codex Supraslensis, a manuscript from the 11th century written in ancient Slavic.

The first Jews came there from Lithuania during the first half of the 17th century. Subsequently there followed Jewish refugees fleeing from the disturbances of 1648, the Cossack revolt under the leadership of Chmelnizki; at the beginning of the 19th century, following the partition of Poland (1772-1795) and with the annexation of this area by Prussia, Jews from the west also settled in Suprasl. In 1857 there were 227 Jews living in Suprasl and within twenty years they already numbered 538 (out of a population of 3,091), even though official permission for their dwelling there was issued only in 1903.

At the end of the 18th century a wooden synagogue was erected, and an additional synagogue, of brick, was begun in 1870. In the construction of this synagogue stained glass was incorporated into its windows and ceiling, and the symbols of the twelve tribes were painted. The building was surrounded by birch trees and a boulevard of trees led up to it. The ritual bath house, (the mikve) the house of the rabbi and ritual slaughterer and the school were in the vicinity of the new synagogue.
In independent Poland, between the two world wars, there was a local Hebrew school of the tarbut network, clubs, and lectures for the whole community took place, in its premises, as well as a library named for I. L. Peretz and an active drama group.

A factory for the manufacture of cloth, established in 1834 near the monastery complex, was the beginning of the textile industry in Suprasl; its founders were the Germans Zechert, Reich and Bucholtz. By 1857 there were already seven textile factories in existence, which together employed 1,019 workers. Although the town's inhabitants also earned their living from trading in lumber, and although there were several local flour mills, Suprasl was already known at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th for the strikes of the textile workers and their occupational struggles, which had political overtones.

At the beginning of the 20th century, when the textile industry in nearby Bialystok was almost completely in Jewish hands, Jews in Suprasl also began to develop this industry. The Zitron family of Bialystok acquired the Suprasl cloth factory from the Bucholtz family, and made it the biggest one in town and in the vicinity. At its peak, the factory employed 1,300 workers. The Hirschhorn brothers established a factory for fabrics and blankets, employing about 120 workers, and this factory's generator supplied electricity to the whole town. A factory specializing in the dyeing and finishing of textiles was established by the Krinsky brothers, and 75 workers were employed there.

After World War I, the Jews also initiated the development of wood processing and marketing. The Hazan, Danzig, Gottlieb and Samitizki families built sawmills, and were aided by the convenient location of the town in the forest and river area. In the factories Jews worked alongside Christians; the work managers were usually of German extraction. They were the first experts in the field of textiles. The Jews worked in vocations which demanded professional skill, and most of the workers were Poles. In addition to all these, Jewish artisans such as tailors, shoemakers, fur processors, bakers and butchers were also present in town. Most of the shops were owned by Jews.

The communist revolution and the Balfour Declaration (1917) brought a new spirit to Suprasl, which until then had been dominated mainly by religious and traditional circles. Branches of the whole spectrum of the Zionist movement were founded there, including those of the Zionist youth movements. In villages near Suprasl, training centers were established for pioneers, graduates of all the Zionist youth movements, in anticipation of their emigration to the land of Israel. Only a few people of Suprasl managed to migrate. The last one to go directly from Suprasl to the land of Israel was Yaakov Pat, who succeeded to in migrating in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II.

The Bund movement was also represented in town, and there were also Jews who were members of the communist party. While the Zionists were trying to emigrate to the land of Israel during the same period, several families migrated from the town to the United States, South America and Australia.

Between 1930 and 1939 Joseph Goldschmidt, a representative of the Jewish community, served as a member of the local council.

On the eve of World War II there were 600 Jews in Suprasl out of a total population of 3,000.

The Holocaust Period

After the outbreak of World War II (September 1, 1939) and subsequent to the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement, the eastern area of Poland came under the rule of the Soviet Union. Factories and private shops were nationalized and there was a shortage of basic necessities in the government shops.

A week after the German attack on the Soviet Union (22 June 1941) the German army entered Suprasl and camped in the town. Jews were arrested on the streets and taken to forced labor, Jewish women were employed as servants of the German officers, Jews were persecuted, their property and money stolen, and there were also incidents of murder. The Germans removed the torah scrolls from the holy ark of the synagogue, burned them and forced a group of Jews to dance around the bonfire. The community's rabbi, Rabbi Shlomo Avigdor Rabinowitz was shot dead. Afterwards the synagogue building was blown up.

A Judenrat, a Jewish council appointed by the German authorities, was established, headed at first by Rabbi Meyer Pat, and later on by the engineer Glicksman. The brothers Joseph and Shaul Goldschmidt were also participants. The town's Jews were left in their houses and not put in a ghetto.

On November 1, 1942 the Germans commanded the Jews to gather in the market square, but most of the Jewish families fled to the forests and stayed there several weeks, in spite of the cold and snow. Because of a calculated German trick, in which the Germans gave proper treatment and showed a humane attitude towards the first family that had to return because its children were ill, the other families returned to town. A group of youths under the leadership of Deidush Fine remained in the forest, organized itself there, kept in contact with the Jewish underground in the Bialystok ghetto, and finally joined together as the Kadima section of the partisans.

The Jews of Suprasl were taken to Bialystok, concentrated there under inhuman conditions, in buildings abandoned by the Polish army (the camp of the tenth brigade), together with Jews from other places in the Bialystok district; and on November 21, 1942 they were taken by train to the Treblinka death camp and murdered there. Several Jews, who had left the forests because of the harsh winter, returned to the Bialystok ghetto they joined the underground there they fell fighting in the revolt of the Bilaystok ghetto that broke out on August 16, 1943.