The Jewish Community of Chortkiv
Chortkov
Чортків; in Polish: Czortkow; in Russian: Chortkov
A town in Ukraine. Uuntil World War II in eastern Galicia, Poland.
Jewish settlement in Chortkov dates from the town's establishment in the 16th century. The community numbering some 50 families were almost all massacred during the Chmielnicki uprisings of 1648-49. Until 1705 Jewish leadership opposed the resettlement of Jews there. A charter granted in 1722 by the Lord of Chortkov mentioned the synagogue of the fortress-synagogue type and the cemetery; Jews were permitted to reside around the marketplace and its adjoining streets in return for paying an increased impost. The census of 1765 records 746 Jews in Chortkov. After 1772 Chortkov was administered by Austria. The community numbered 3,146 in 1900 and 3,314 in 1921 (out of a total population of 5,191). The beautifully engraved tombstones in the cemetery attest to the presence of a family of Jewish masons in Chortkov at the beginning of the 18th century. The many scholars who resided at Chortkov include Rabbi Shraga, who lived there between 1717 and 1720, and the Talmudist Tzevi Hirsch Ha-Levi Horowitz, active there in 1726-54. Chortkov became a chasidic center when in 1860 David Moses Friedmann, son of Israel of Ruzhyn, settled there and founded a dynasty. The author Karl Emil Franzos who came from Chortkov described Jewish characters there in his novel Juden von Barnow.
At the outbreak of World War II there were approximately 8,000 Jews in Chortkov. The Soviet period (September 1939 - June 1941) brought far-reaching changes in the structure of the Jewish community, its economy, and educational system. Factories and businesses were nationalized, and many members of the Jewish intelligentsia sought employment in government service. Many refugees from western Poland found assistance and relief through the synagogue, which had become the center for community activity - in part underground. When the Germans attacked the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941), hundreds of young Jews fled, some joining the Soviet army and some escaping into the interior. The town was occupied by the Germans on July 6, 1941 and four days later some 200 Jews were killed in the first pogrom, which was followed in August by the murder of 100 Jews in nearby Czarny Las. In Chortkov itself, 330 Jews were killed that month in the prison courtyard. Shmuel Kruh was appointed head of the Judenrat. His stolid opposition to the Nazi policies resulted in his arrest and execution (October 12, 1941). In October 1941 several hundred Hungarian Jews were brought to the vicinity of Chortkov, and most of them were murdered en route to Jagielnica. At the same time about 200 Jews in the professions were killed. In the winter of 1941-42, hundreds of Jews were kidnapped for slave labor camps in Skalat and Jamionka. A mass aktion took place on August 28, 1942, when 2,000 Jews were rounded up and sent to Belzec death camp. About 500 children, sick, and elderly persons were shot in Chortkov itself. Five hundred Jews were dispatched on October 5, 1942 to Belzec. Toward the end of the year, 1,000 Jews were sent to slave labor camps in the district. Almost all the inmates were murdered in July 1943. A month later the last remaining Jews in Chortkov were killed and the city was declared Judenrein. When the Soviet army occupied the area (March 1944), only about 100 Jews were found alive in Chortkov and a few in a nearby labor camp.
Several resistance groups were active in the ghetto, in the labor camps, and among the partisans who operated in the Chortkov forests. Their leaders were Ryuwen Rosenberg, Meir Waserman, and the two brothers Heneik and Mundek Nusbaum.
After the war no Jews settled in Chortkov. Societies of Chortkov Jews exist in Israel and in New York. A memorial book Sefer Yizkor Le-Hantzachat Kedoshei Kehillat Chortkov was published in 1967.
Bernard Dov Hausner (1874-1938), rabbi, educator and Zionist, born in Chortkiv, Ukraine( then Czortkow in Galicia, part of Austria-Hungary). He studied in Vienna at the university and the Rabbinical Seminary. He then taught religion at a Lvov high school. During WW I he served as chief rabbi of Russian-occupied Lvov (1914-16) and was a chaplain in the Austro-Hungarian army on the Italian front. After the war, Hausner directed the Jewish National Fund in Eastern Galicia and from 1921-25 headed the Mizrachi there, expanding the religious-national school movement. He was elected to the Polish parliament (Sejm) in 1922. In 1927 he was appointed Polish commercial attache in Tel Aviv and in 1932, consul. Hausner returned to Poland in 1933 but settled permanently in the Land of Israel two years later.
Israel Waldmann (1880-1940), supporter of Ukrainian nationalism, born in Chortkiv, Ukraine (then Czortkow in Galicia, part of Austria-Hungary). His school studies were cut short because of his links with Zionism. He worked as a legal advisor to a Ukrainian nationalist leader in Tarnopol (Ternopil) and became acquainted with the Ukrainian national movement. During WW I he was in Vienna where he maintained his contacts with Ukrainian nationalist leaders. He published a daily, Lemberger Zeitung, supporting Jewish national claims. After the war he continued as a propagandist for the Ukrainian leadership. In the Steiger case (1924-1925) when a Jew was charged with attempting to kill the Polish president, Waldmann revealed Ukrainian responsibility and severed his ties with the Ukrainian movement. He then lived in Vienna until 1935 when he moved to the Land of Israel.
Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name derives from a Jewish value or religious concepts. It is also derived from an Aramaic personal name or title. Originally a personal name and title, Shraga is a Hebrew name deriving from the Aramaic for "fire/light". It is associated with wisdom and sharpness of mind. In talmudic times, people credited with bringing light or intellectual clarity to their subject were given the Hebrew name Meir ("one who enlightens"), Yair ("he will bring light") or the Aramaic forms, Nehorai, Nahor, Shraga. As personal names, Uri and Schraga often appeared in combination as an apotropaism, given in order to ward off danger and evil. An infant orphaned of both parents would be given the secular name Vives (an equivalent of Hayyim, that is "life"), and also the Hebrew Uri Shraga as a symbolic reference to the two departed souls.
Many Jewish family names are derived from these terms, their variants or patronymics (a name derived from a male ancestor's personal name), or from their translations into different languages, such as the Greek Phoebus, the Latin Lucius, the Spanish Lombroso, the German Licht and Feuer.
Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Shraga include the 20th century Romanian-born Israeli attorney and politician, Alexander Shraga.
Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name derives from time (day, month, season, or Jewish holy day). The Jewish family name is also a patronymic (derived from a male ancestor's personal name).
As a Jewish family name, Nusbaum is usually derived from the Hebrew month name Nisan, which is also a male personal name, usually personal to people born on Passover. By transforming a Hebrew name into a German sounding name, Jews managed to both maintain their Jewish tradition, as well as to become part of their host society. The German and Yiddish suffix Baum, literally "tree" in German, is an element commonly used for creating artificial Jewish family names, i.e. names that do not refer to any feature of the first bearer of the family name, or as a prefix (Baumgarten) or a suffix (Feigenbaum). In Jewish family names it is often used as an indication of belonging to a certain family, clan or tribe of the Jewish people. In some cases Nusbaum, literally "walnut tree", is derived from a medieval house-sign, as for example in the Jewish quarter (Judengasse) of medieval Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where each house had a sign, usually an animal or a flower. With time, many of the signs became fixed hereditary family name.
Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Nusbaum include the 19th/20th century American educator and editor in chief of the magazine 'The Teacher', Louis Nusbaum, and the 19th/20th century American civic worker Harry Nusbaum.
Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name.
Literally "rose mountain" in German, Rosenberg and its Yiddish equivalent Roisenberg can be associated with towns called Rosenberg in Poland, Czech Republic and Germany. Rosenberg is also one of the numerous forms of the matronymics of a woman called Rosa or Rose, or it can also derive from a house sign depicting a rose (many Jewish families adopted their house sign as their surname, for example those persons coming from Frankfurt am Main, Germany).
Berg, the second component, of Rosenberg, literally "mountain" in German/Yiddish, is a common artificial name in Jewish surnames, that can be found as a prefix (Bergstein) or a suffix (Goldberg). The term Berg is found in many German and other place names. Jews lived since the 13th century in the former Duchy and Grand Duchy of Berg in Westphalia, from which they might have derived Berg as a family name. One family is known to have taken the name Berg as an acronym (a name created from the initial letters of a Hebrew phrase, and which refers to a relative, lineage or occupation) of Ben Reb Gershon ("son of Rabbi Gershon").
Distinguished bearers of the Jewish surname Rosenberg include the German historian and politician Arthur Rosenberg (1889-1943), the Russian-born American labor leader Abraham Rosenberg, and the 20th century American jurist, painter and philanthropist James Rosenberg.
CZORTKOWER, CHORTKOVER
Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name is a toponymic (derived from a geographic name of a town, city, region or country).
Surnames that are based on place names do not always testify to direct origin from that place, but may indicate an indirect relation between the name-bearer or his ancestors and the place, such as birth place, temporary residence, trade, or family-relatives.
This family name is derived from Czortkow, the Polish name of Chortkiv, a city in the historical region of Galicia, now in Ukraine. The meaning of the German/Yiddish suffix “-er” is “from”, “of.
Czortkower is documented as a Jewish family name with Abraham Czortkower, a Polish-born resident of Clevealnf, OH, who died in 1976 aged 84.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970), Hebrew novelist and Nobel prize winner, born as Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes in Buczacz, Galicia - then part of Austria-Hungary, now in Ukraine, where his father, a fur merchant, was a follower of the Hasidic rebbe of Czortkow. Age eight he was already writing in Hebrew and Yiddish, and from 1903 his work was appearing in journals. By the time he moved to Eretz Israel in 1907 he already had a literary reputation. He lived in Berlin and then in Bad Homburg, Germany, from 1913 to 1924 when his home and manuscripts were destroyed in a fire. He then moved to Jerusalem where again in the Arab riots of 1929 many of his books and manuscripts were lost. Agnon is the great writer of modern Hebrew epics and his works are often symbolic. His Hebrew style is original, blending Biblical, Talmudic and Midrashic Hebrew. Many of his works recreate the East European Jewish milieu in which he grew up, incorporating rich folklore and ethnographic material. Others are set in 20th century Eretz Israel - from the period of the Second Aliya to academic life at the Hebrew University. In 1966 he shared the Nobel Literature Prize with Nelly Sachs.