Jewish community of Butschatsch

Rabbi grave in the Jewish cemetery in Butschatsch

The Jewish Congregation of Butschach (Hebrew בוצ'אץ ') was a Jewish community in the Ukrainian city of Butschach in Ternopil Oblast .

history

From 1500 Jews settled in the community, which at the beginning of the 20th century already made up more than half of the population.

During the time of the aristocratic republic of Poland-Lithuania , Poles, Turks and Ukrainian Cossacks fought for the city again and again. In 1672 and 1675 the city was conquered by the Turks for a short time. The Jewish population group fought on the side of the Poles.

After the First World War and the subsequent occupation of Ukraine by the Red Army under Trotsky , most of the Jewish population fled. Large parts of this remaining population group were then deported from the Reichskommissariat Ukraine in the course of the German occupation of the Ukraine (1941–1943/44) and murdered in concentration camps. In June 1943, the last survivors of the Butschatsch ghetto were shot in the Butschatsch Jewish cemetery . In the weeks that followed, the cemetery was used by the Wehrmacht and SS , as well as the Ukrainian Liberation Army, as a place of execution for Jews who had hidden in the ghetto and in the surrounding villages. When the Red Army liberated the city in March 1944, around 800 Jews were still alive who had survived the German occupation in hiding and with the help of non-Jewish residents. About 700 of these survivors, however, were killed by the Germans, who recaptured Butschatsch shortly afterwards.

graveyard

Jewish cemetery in Butschatsch

The Butschatsch Jewish Cemetery was established in the 16th century. The last known funeral took place in 1940.

building

Postcard with the synagogue in Butschatsch (around 1900), right side

In 1728 the Great Synagogue (Groyse Schul) was built. It was damaged in World War II and demolished in the second half of the 1940s.

The Jewish study house Beth Midrash (Hebrew בית מדרש) was also demolished in 2001 to make room for a new shopping center.

Personalities

Simon Wiesenthal , founder of the Documentation Center of the Association of Jews Persecuted by the Nazi Regime in Vienna
Stanislaw Rucinski , Wiesenthal's assistant for many years
Samuel Agnon , a Hebrew writer
Emanuel Ringelblum , a Polish-Jewish historian, politician, educator and publicist

literature

Omer Bartov : Buczacz. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 1: A-Cl. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02501-2 , pp. 450–455.

Web links

Commons : Judaism in Butschatsch - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Index of Gravestones in Jewish Cemetery in Buchach (Eng.)
Buchach ; therein: Jewish cemetery (Engl.)

Individual evidence

↑ Buczacz Origins. An account of the Jewish community of Buczacz, its history and society, culminating in its destruction during the Holocaust. Translated, Edited and Compiled by Martin Rudner. 1993, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, online: [1]

[1] Buczacz Origins. An account of the Jewish community of Buczacz, its history and society, culminating in its destruction during the Holocaust. Translated, Edited and Compiled by Martin Rudner. 1993, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, online: [1]