Me (Belarus)
| Me | Me | |||
| Мір | Мир | |||
| ( Belarus. ) | ( Russian ) | |||
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| State : |
 Belarus
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| Woblasz : | |||
| Founded : | 1345 | ||
| Coordinates : | 53 ° 27 ' N , 26 ° 28' E | ||
| Residents : | 2,500 (2005) | ||
| Time zone : | Moscow time ( UTC + 3 ) | ||
| Postal code : | 231444 | ||
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Mir (Belarus: Мір ; Russian: Мир ) is a small town in Belarus on the Miranka River in the Hrodsenskaja Woblasz , on the Minsk - Nawahradak road , approx. 85 km southwest of Minsk.
economy
The larger companies located in Mir mainly process agricultural products (dairy factories, bread factories, distilleries, poultry factories, sawmills).
history
Middle Ages and early modern times
The first written mention of the city is dated to the year 1395. Since 1486 the city in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania belonged to the magnate family of the Illintschi. Probably after 1522 Yuri I. Illinitsch left today for World Heritage is part of UNESCO Mir Castle building.
In 1555 Mir became the center of the county of the same name and in 1568 it became the property of the Radziwiłł family . Eleven years later, Mir received Magdeburg city rights .
In the first half of the 17th century, Mir developed into an important center of handicrafts and trade for Poland and Lithuania, but agriculture was the largest economic factor.
Modern times
Since the second half of the 17th century, a large Jewish community has been recorded for Mir. I developed into a spiritual and intellectual center of Judaism of international importance, producing a number of famous rabbis and other scholars. The city became one of the Eastern European shtetls . Last but not least, the large number of synagogues testifies to this : At places of worship there is evidence for the year 1886: seven synagogues, two churches , one mosque .
In 1706 Mir was badly damaged in the Third Northern War . The city recovered quickly, in the 18th century annual fairs were established, which were held in May and December for one month each.
In the second half of the 18th century, Gypsies settled in Minsk, where their head (king) also lived for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, who was granted the privilege of jurisdiction over the Gypsies by K. Radziwiłł in 1787 .
As a result of the third partition of Poland , Mir came under the rule of the Moscow Tsar as part of the Russian Empire in 1795 . At the beginning of Napoleon's Russian campaign in 1812 , the Battle of Mir took place here , in which the Russian cavalry defeated the Polish ones.
20th century
After the Polish-Soviet War and the Peace of Riga on March 18, 1921, Mir fell to Poland, where it remained until the Soviet invasion in September 1939.
German occupation
In the course of the German invasion of the Soviet Union , the German occupying power ruled Mir from June 26, 1941 until the liberation on July 7, 1944 and murdered most of the city's Jewish population .
In the morning hours of June 27, 1941, German troops set numerous buildings on fire.
Ghetto formation and persecution of the Jews
On November 9, 1941, soldiers of the 8th Company of the 727 Infantry Regiment under the command of local commander Stołpce, supported by local police officers, murdered around 1,500 Jews in Mir. It was the first major extermination operation in the city. Previously, individual Jews or groups of up to twenty people had been murdered. On this day the soldiers and Lieutenant Ludwig Göbel arrived in Mir on trucks and drove all the Jews to the market square, whereby an indefinite number of skilled workers were sorted out. The other people, including women, old people and children, were shot dead in the neck. The survivors were taken to a ghetto, which was separated from the rest of the city with barbed wire and guarded by policemen. Jews from surrounding towns were also brought there. Small groups were shot until, in May 1942, the ghetto with around 800 survivors was moved to the ruins of Mir Castle. The ghetto inmates had to do forced labor and get by on minimal food rations. The living and hygiene conditions were catastrophic. There was only one well in the castle, the water supply of which was insufficient for all those trapped, which resulted in numerous deaths of malnutrition and exhaustion. After a connection between Jews and partisans was established by Nazi politicians and the military, the Gendarmeriegebietsführer in Baranavichy received the order in August 1942 to finally clear the flat country of Jews . However, the Jews were informed by Oswald Rufeisen , a Polish Jew who had successfully passed himself off as a Volksdeutscher, worked as a translator for the local police and therefore had internal information, before the imminent "major action" (a euphemism common to the SS for the murder of the Residents) on August 13th. 150 people managed to escape into the woods, which is why some of them survived the Shoah. The remaining 560 Jews were shot the next day by the Germans together with the Belarusian protection teams . The Mir gendarmerie was then busy looking for the Jews who had fled, some of whom were captured and executed.
In total, the Germans and their local helpers murdered more than 2,500 civilians in Mir and the surrounding area.
On January 15, 1940, Mir became the center of the newly formed Mir Rajon, and since December 17, 1956, the city has belonged to the Karelickij Rajon.
Culture, education and sights
In Mir there is a technical vocational school, a technical school for art restoration, a middle school and a kindergarten, a house of culture and a branch of the Belarusian Art Museum.
The most famous building in Mir is the Mir Castle, built at the beginning of the 15th century , which has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2000 .
In Mir there is the Catholic St. Nicolaj Church, the Orthodox of the Trinity Church (Trojckaja cerkov), a former synagogue and the building of the former yeshiva .
A memorial on a mass grave commemorates the victims of National Socialism.
Personalities
- Naphtali Zwi Juda Berlin (1816-1893), Russian rabbi
- Salman Shazar (1889–1974), an Israeli politician and third President of Israel .
literature
- Nachman Blumental: Sefer Mir [The Book of Mir] (Jerusalem: Entsiklopedia shel Galuyot, 1962).
- Martin Dean: Microcosm: Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust in the Mir Rayon of Belarus, 1941-44. In Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, edited by D. Gaunt, PA Levine, L. Palosuo (Bern, & c .: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 223-60.
- Michail Hurin: "Me." In: Encyklapedyja Historyj Belarusi. Vol. 5, pp. 204f. (Encyclopedia of the History of Belarus).
- Nesvish: Me. Putevoditel. Minsk 2004. ( Nyasvish . Mir. Travel guide.)
- Nechama Tec : In the lion's den: the life of Oswald Rufeisen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
- Mir , in: Guy Miron (Ed.): The Yad Vashem encyclopedia of the ghettos during the Holocaust . Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009 ISBN 978-965-308-345-5 , pp. 484f.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Me frendy.de .
- ↑ Alexander Brakel: Under Red Star and Swastika. Baranowicze 1939 to 1944. Western Belarus under Soviet and German occupation . (= Age of World Wars. Volume 5). Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76784-4 , p. 101.
- ↑ Alexander Brakel: Under Red Star and Swastika. Baranowicze 1939 to 1944. Western Belarus under Soviet and German occupation . (= Age of World Wars. Volume 5). Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76784-4 , pp. 101-103.
Web links
- Article about me on JewishGen: The Home of Jewish Genealogy (English)
- Resistance plans and escape from the Mir ghetto (ushmm.org; English)
- Photos and pedigrees of the old Mir (English)