Minsk, Belorussia (USSR)

MINSK Minsk district, Belorussia. Jewish settlement in Minsk commenced in the 15th century with the arrival of Jews expelled from Lithuania in 1495. In 1579, the Polish king, Stephen Bathory, granted the Jews a charter of privileges which was afterwards confirmed by King Sigismund III. In 1623, the community was under the jurisdiction of Brest-Litovsk but in 1631, because of its growth, the Lithuanian Council accorded it special regional status together with its Russian hinterland. In the period of the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-49, the Jews were expelled from the city, returning only in 1658. Anti-Jewish riots broke out in 1671. After King John Sobieski III confirmed Jewish rights in 1679, the community enjoyed a long period of prosperity. The first Minsk yeshiva was founded in 1685. Among the community's rabbis were some of the greatest in Poland and Lithuania, such as Rabbi Yehiel Heilprin (serving in 1712-43). In 1766, the Jewish population was 1,322. In the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, Minsk was annexed to Russia. The Jewish population rose from 2,675 in 1802 to 47,662 (total 90,884) in 1897. As a railroad junction from the early 1870s, Minsk became a regional center for the lumber and grain trade. In the 1880s, 88% of commerce was in Jewish hands and Jews almost completely dominated certain trades, such as tailoring. In 1904, 6,600 Jews, almost half the Jewish breadwinners in the city, were artisans. However, though most factories were also in Jewish hands, few Jews worked there and the difficult economic conditions prevailing in the city were among the major causes of the emigration of thousands of Jews (estimated at as much as 20-25% of the Jewish population), mainly to the U.S. Hasidism exercised a limited influence. A number of yeshivot were founded, mostly by students of the Gaon of Vilna. In addition to the beautiful stone-built Great Synagogue, about 40 prayer houses were active in the 1880s and 1890s, their number rising to 83 in 1917 when thousands of Jewish refugees arrived from western Russia. In the late 19th century, Rabbi Yehuda Perelmann (known as the Great [Scholar] of Minsk) officiated in the community. In the 1890s, the number of Jewish children attending state or private Russian language schools grew considerably. In 1881-82, 140 Jewish boys (of a total 552 students) were enrolled at the classical high school and 22 girls (of 59) at the natural sciences high school. In addition, three two and four year state schools for Jewish children were in operation along with a talmud torah and numerous hadarim. Of Jewish welfare institutions, the 65-bed Jewish hospital was particularly prominent. In the late 19th century, the Jewish labor movement under the leadership of the Bund came to the fore. The latter held its founding convention in Minsk in 1895 and in 1900 numbered about 1,000 members. Its leaders were among the organizers of Jewish self defense in the face of local riots that officers and soldiers initiated during Easter of 1897 and 1905. In 1898, at the initiative of the Bund, the first convention of the All Russian Social Democrat Party was held in Minsk. As early as 1882 a Niddehei Yisrael association was founded which sought to purchase land in Eretz Israel. In the late 19th century, the Zionist parties became active. In 1901, the founding convention of Po'alei Zion was held in Minsk and in 1902 the second convention of the Russian Zionists. In 1911, Tze'irei Tziyyon convened in Minsk. The large number of Jewish refugees, who arrived after the outbreak of WWI, included students from the famous Volozhin yeshiva. The Jewish population rose to 67,000 in 1917. Under the German occupation, elections to the community council were held in 1918 with the Zionists gaining a majority of the seats. The Orthodox parties took second place and the Bund third. In January 1920, a convention of Jewish community councils was held in Minsk, with the Zionists again prevailing; their representatives were placed at the head of the National Council of Belorussian Jewish Communities. On the withdrawal of the Polish army from the city on 9-11 July 1920, Polish soldiers looted two thirds of the city's stores (most under Jewish ownership) as well as a hide processing plant and Jewish pharmacy. In addition to robbing thousands of residents (also mainly Jews), the soldiers raped and murdered and burned down a number of Jewish homes. Immediately after the arrival of the Soviet authorities in July 1920, the activities of the community council as well as of the Jewish political parties were curtailed. Many activists were exiled. Only Po'alei Zion continued to operate within a Communist framework, until it too was closed down in 1928. A number of Zionists managed to leave for Palestine. During the Soviet period, the Jewish population rose from 53,686 in 1926 to 70,998 (total 238,970) in 1939. A Jewish law court which carried out its proceedings in Yiddish was opened in 1926. A Jewish teachers' college founded in 1922 was incorporated into the general teachers' college as a separate department in 1931 but closed down in the mid-1930s. A special department of Belorussian Jewish studies was also opened at Minsk University as well as a Jewish section in the Belorussian Academy of Sciences (in 1924). In the early 1930s, a Jewish section was included in the Institute of Belorussian Culture and in 1931 a department for Yiddish speakers was opened at the local transportation institute (closed in 1934). Over 6,470 Jewish children (of a total 10,300 Jewish children) were enrolled in Jewish schools in 1926-27. In 1931 there were still as many as ten Jewish schools in Minsk, most of them for elementary education and some of which continued to operate until 1938. A number of clandestine yeshivot were active in the late 1920s (with 400 students in 1928). A clandestine heder was also active in one of the synagogues in 1929. The Yevsektsiya tried to promote (without much success) a "Red" community with a "Red" rabbi. In 1926, the Belorussian Jewish State Theater was founded as the successor of the Jewish Theater Studio operating since 1921. A Jewish library with 40,000 volumes was established at the Lenin Central Library in the 1920s. Three additional Jewish libraries with large collections were also operating during this period. In the late 1920s, Jewish artisans organized in a union (980 of whose 1,100 members were Jews) had their own club. The number of Jewish factory workers steadily increased. In the late 1930s, a third (10,000) of all factory workers in the city were Jews, while over 83% of Jews still declared Yiddish to be their mother tongue at the end of the 1920s. Two Hebrew printing presses were operating in the early 19th century In the early 20th century, Yiddish newspapers such as the Minsker Vochenblat were appearing, some clandestinely printed. After the February 1917 Revolution, Minsk became a center of the Jewish press for all of Belorussia, especially in Yiddish. The daily Veker, the organ of the Bund in 1917-25, was succeeded by Oktyabr in 1925-41. Der Yunger Arbeter appeared twice a month from 1922 to at least the mid-1930s. In 1926-31, the Jewish section of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences published five volumes of Tsaytshrift, a journal devoted to Jewish literature, history, and social studies. The important daily newspaper Der Shtern (1918-1941), the literary monthly Shtern (1925-41), and numerous other political, professional, and scientific publications appeared in Minsk. Among the well known Jewish figures born in Minsk were the Yiddish-Russian writers Lev Osipovich Levanda (b. 1835) and Rivka Rovina (b. 1906); the historian of Russian Jewry Shaul Ginzburg (b. 1866); the director Yaakov Viktor Golovtchiner (b. 1905); the Zionist leader and first finance minister of Israel, Eliezer Kaplan (b. 1901); and the linguist and educator Avraham Even Shoshan (b. 1906). The Germans captured Minsk on 28 June 1941 following heavy bombardment on the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union. Because of the rapid German advance, few Jews managed to escape the city. A few days after the occupation, the Germans ordered all Jewish males aged 15-50 to report to military headquarters. All were transferred to camps on Shirokaya Street near the Svisloch River in Staro-Razhevski, where they joined Jews from Borisov, Vitebsk, Vileike, and other places, making a total of 25,000. Another camp was established at Drozdy. Hundreds at both camps were murdered before being transferred back to the newly established Minsk ghetto. On 7 July, the Germans executed about 100 Jews for alleged Communist links. On 20 July, the Jews were ordered into the ghetto. They were also ordered to wear, in addition to a yellow badge on the front and back of their clothes, a white triangular patch with their addresses. The ghetto included 34 streets and alleys as well as the Jewish cemetery. In addition to local Jews and those returning from the camps, thousands of Jews were brought in from Dzerzhinsk, Uzda, Slutsk, etc. The exorbitant tributes the Germans exacted from the Jews were presumably earmarked for a ghetto wall but instead barbed wire was used. A Judenrat was established in July along with a Jewish police force. The first head of the Judenrat was Eliyahu Mushkin (until March 1942). After he was hanged along with the head of the Jewish police, the Germans appointed Moshe Yaffe, a refugee lawyer from Vilna. An estimated 100,000 Jews were concentrated in the ghetto. Jews forced to work at the local jail were held nearby, outside the ghetto, to keep them from revealing what went on there (they were also among the last to be executed in May 1943). Almost from the outset of the occupation, the Germans regularly seized Jews and after murdering them, threw their bodies into freshly dug pits at the Jewish cemetery. Thus, on 14 August a few hundred were executed; on 26 August a few hundred men and women were removed to an unknown destination; and on 31 August, 916 were murdered. Another 600-700 were seized and murdered in October. Mass murder by Einsatzkommando E. K. 8 units commenced in July 1941, with 1,100 Jews killed over a six-week period. The Reichsfuehrer, Heinrich Himmler, was present during one of the Aktions. On 1 September, 330 Jews were murdered. On 9 October, 142 Jews caught without the yellow badge were executed. The Germans set up a second ghetto near the first for German Jews (called the Hamburg ghetto). It, too, had a Judenrat, headed by Dr. Frank. During all of its existence (November 1941 – September 1943), this ghetto, which had almost no contact with the first ghetto, received 23,500 Jews from Germany, Vienna, and Czechoslovakia. Almost all were murdered soon or even immediately after their arrival. Thousands were forced to work long hours outside the ghetto in factories, workshops, army camps, and at the railroad station. In payment they received thin soup and a few slices of bread. To overcome their perpetual hunger, many Jews traded with their "Aryan" neighbors on the other side of the fence and with Jews in the Hamburg ghetto. The non-Jewish population responded to the suffering of the Jews with little humanity. Many took part in pillaging Jewish property from the outset of the occupation. Few tried to save Jews. The German officials responsible for the extermination of the Jews in the city were Wilhelm Kube, Generalkommissar of Belorussia with headquarters in Minsk, and A. Strauch, chief of security police. Members of the Communist Party, some of them refugees from western Belorussia or Poland, established an underground in August 1941. With the failure of resistance in the "Aryan" part of the city, the ghetto underground was in effect nearly the only one operating in Minsk. It received substantial assistance from the Judenrat. The first large-scale Aktion took place on 7 November 1941. Its aim was to "make room" for thousands of Jews being brought in from the Reich. Thus, the Einsatzkommando, with the assistance of Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian police executed 12,000 at Tuchinka. During the Aktion, Jewish homes were looted by local residents and peasants from the neighboring villages. Only three Jews escaped from the pits at the killing site and returned to the ghetto, including a child of ten and a woman. The second Aktion took place on 20 November, with 7,000 Jews massacred in the same place. After the Aktion, many Jews tried to find hiding places in the ghetto or escape to the forest. The third Aktion occurred on 2 March 1942 when the Judenrat was ordered to hand over thousands of Jews. On orders from the Jewish underground, the Judenrat refused and the Germans swooped down on convoys of Jewish workers, murdering over 5,000. The underground, which grew to 450 members, concentrated mainly on getting thousands of Jews out of the ghetto and into the forests, where they could join existing partisan units. It also set up seven of its own partisan units, such as Detachment 208 in the Mogilev area, Detachment 406 and the Budyonny Detachment in the Zaslavl area, and Detachment 106 under the command of S. Zorin. Following the Aktion of 2 March, the Germans carried out night Aktions, such as the one on 3 April, when 500 Jews were murdered. The next major Aktion, using gas vans, took place at the nearby village of Maly Trostenec on 28-31 July 1942 and claimed 30,000 Jewish victims. Nine thousand Jews now remained in the ghetto, which became a camp and was liquidated on 21 October 1943. The Judenrat was dismantled and an administrative apparatus set up with a number of collaborators from among the prisoners. About 3,000 Jews were deported to camps in Poland in summer 1943, including the Budzyn camp near Lublin. The remaining "essential" workers were murdered at Maly Trostenec on 21 October. There, in the fall, the Germans began burning the bodies of tens of thousands of victims. In all, 90,000-100,000 ghetto residents, including thousands from the Reich, were murdered by the Germans. About 5,000 Jews returned to the city from the forests. In 1945, the first memorial in Yiddish in the Soviet Union was dedicated: "To the Jews -Victims of Nazism." In January 1948, Shelomo Mikhoels, chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the leading actor in Moscow's Jewish State Theater, was killed in Minsk in a staged automobile accident. His murder marked the end of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union and the start of the Soviet Union's antisemitic campaign.