Bereschany Jewish Community
The Bereschany Jewish Congregation was a Jewish religious community in the Ukrainian city of Bereschany in Bereschany Raion and Ternopil Oblast .
History of the Jewish Community
The Jewish community was founded around 1570 by four Ashkenazi families who poured into Eastern Europe as part of the great waves of flight in Europe . A hundred years later, this had increased to around one hundred families and was growing steadily. Most of the parishioners were traders, doctors, lawyers, teachers, judges, and civil servants. Over the years, around 40 members of the community were registered as attorneys at the responsible district court in what was then crown land of Galicia .
Decisive changes came for the community after the First World War . During the Polish-Ukrainian War , the majority of the Jewish residents were loyally neutral towards them. This changed after a massacre by the Polish army between November 22 and 24, 1918 near Lemberg, in which, according to the Morgenthau report by Henry Morgenthau senior, 64 Jews were killed. After the occupation of Ukraine by the Red Army under Trotsky from 1921, the Jews were therefore friendly towards Soviet Russia . A Jewish council was formed and any Jew who had reached the age of 18 was allowed to vote in democratic elections. The first chairman of this eight-member council, which was set up as a self-administration for the shtetl , was Dr. Chandler. The last elections to the Council of the Jewish Community were held in 1936.
On July 7, 1941, the German Wehrmacht occupied the city, in which around 4,000 Jews still lived at that time. Immediately after the occupation, anti-Jewish measures were imposed. a. mandatory identification, curfew after sunset and a ban on leaving the city. At the beginning of August 1941 a Judenrat was formed and it was forced to collect a high levy within the Jewish community, to register all men for forced labor and to deliver all valuables, goods and furniture from Jewish households to the German occupation forces.
Eight days before the Jewish New Year celebrations, Rosh Hashanah, in autumn 1941, the Gestapo asked all Jews in the city to go to Targowica Square on that festival day . The assembled 600 Jewish citizens were deported to various concentration camps and to the forced labor camp for Jews, where most of them perished. The remaining Jews were then herded together , symbolically and mockingly, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur , in September 1942, and also deported. The District Chief Hans-Adolf Asbach was a spectator of the "Jewish action", were beaten than people in the railroad cars. Together with the other Jews from the area, there were around 1,500 people. 60 young girls were sorted out and transported to special camps near Jagielnica (now Jahilnyzja) and near Chortkiv.
Only 510 members of the Bereschany Jewish community survived the deportations and mass exterminations of the Holocaust.
The remaining Jews from the region were brought to the sealed-off ghetto in Bereschany. When it was dissolved in 1943, a total of 1180 Jews were killed in the Jewish cemetery in a three-day liquidation operation by the SS guards. The only survivor and eyewitness of the mass shootings was Menachem Katz . After the victory of the Allies and the restructuring and annexation of Ukraine to the USSR, many of the remaining Jews from the community and the region fled from the persecution in the Stalin regime , which ultimately brought Jewish community life to a standstill.
Synagogues
In the course of time several synagogues were built in the city.
Great synagogue
In 1718 the community built its own Great Synagogue , which played an important role as the center of the community's entire cultural life. After the occupation of western Ukraine by the Soviet Union in 1939, as a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact , the Red Army confiscated the building and misused it as a granary. The function was also retained by the German occupiers from 1941 and after the reconquest by the Red Army in 1944. Today it is a ruin.
In the course of time, other synagogues were built:
"Cantor's Synagogue"
The smaller "Cantor's Synagogue" was less used and was used by Rabbi Nathanson for his sermons.
Reb Judel's synagogue
The Reb Judels synagogue , located on the corner of Lvivska and Ternopilskaa streets, was a very busy synagogue and was completely destroyed during the war.
“Tschortkower Klois” synagogue
The "Tschortkower Klois" synagogue was used by Hasidim , and in particular supporters of Rabbi Jakob Josef von Polonoje . It was a simple two-story building. It was in the immediate vicinity of the house of Rabbi Mordechai Hacohen Schwadron Gaon , who was the Rabbi of Bereschany for the Hasidim. This synagogue was completely destroyed during the First World War shortly after a renovation.
Rabbi Mendele Synagogue
The Rabbi Mendele Synagogue was on the former Strazacka Street. It was badly damaged during a bombing by the German Air Force and burned out.
There was also the Jair synagogue .
The Hebrew School in Bereschany
In May 1903 the organization "SAFA-BRURA" (German: clear language) opened a Hebrew school in Bereschany, in which there was a library and a reading room . This was closed during the First World War and only reopened in 1917. After the headmaster at the time left the place in 1921, it was closed again. At the end of 1927 a relative of Tadeusz Komorowski continued the school as a teacher. In 1929 an operator association was founded to run the school.
The Jewish cemetery
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The Bereschany Jewish Cemetery is located outside the city on the Okopysko Hill and was the scene of mass executions of Jewish residents of the city by the Wehrmacht , SS guards of the ghetto and their helpers from the Ukrainian insurgent army and the liberation army in 1942/43 . The bodies are buried in mass graves in the cemetery.
Personalities of the Jewish community
- Joseph Saul Nathanson (1808–1875), rabbi
literature
- Andrej Angrick and Peter Klein, The “Final Solution” in Riga. Exploitation and Destruction 1941–1944 , Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt (2006), ISBN 3534191498
- Henry Morgenthau: Ambassador Morgenthau's Story , Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2003. ISBN 0-8143-3159-9 (work from 1918)
See also
- List of Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine
- List of synagogues in Ukraine
- Jews in Eastern Europe
- History of the Jews in Russia
Web links
- Old Jewish cemetery at Okopysko hill in Berezhany, western Ukraine. (Photo)
- http://www.personal.ceu.hu/students/97/Roman_Zakharii/brzezaner.htm
Individual evidence
- ↑ Holocaust Chronology ( Memento of the original dated August 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Concentration camp and satellite camp
- ^ Thomas sand cooler: Final solution in Galicia. The murder of Jews in Eastern Poland and the rescue initiatives of Berthold Beitz 1941–1944 . Dietz Successor, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-8012-5022-9 , p. 262
- ↑ https://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/berezhany/Bere006.html Information on the synagogues. Retrieved October 3, 2018
Coordinates: 49 ° 26 '34.5 " N , 24 ° 55' 44.4" E