Hancewicze

Jews received permission to live in Hancewicze in 1903. Although the Jewish population increased prior to World War I, its more intensive growth took place in the interwar period, when Hancewicze became an important center of the wood-processing industry. About 60 percent of the local Jews were involved in this activity. Some of them owned sawmills and other wood-processing facilities, while others made their living in the industry as commercial agents or as simple workers. The rest of the Jews engaged in small-scale trade or artisanship. The Jewish community supported an orphanage, a Tarbut school, and a Yiddish school, as well as a library. Various Zionist political groups were active in Hancewicze. In 1921 the Jewish population of Hancewicze amounted to 485 people, or about 48 percent of the total population. The Soviets occupied Hancewicze in September 1939. Around this time 200-300 Jewish refugees from central and western parts of Poland arrived in Hancewicze and settled there. Jewish political and social activities were banned by the authorities. Ten Jewish owners of large businesses and their families were deported by the Soviets to the eastern part of the USSR. By 1941 the number of local Jews was about 3,000. Hancewicze was occupied by the Germans on June 29 or 30, 1941. The next day non-Jewish residents of the village carried out a pogrom during which 16 Jews were murdered and much Jewish property was looted. The German occupiers forced the Jews to carry out such tasks as road construction and timber felling. Starting from August 1941, they had to wear special armbands to indicate their Jewish identity. Most local Jews were murdered in the course of a number of operations, all of them in July–August 1941. Some of these murders took place in Hancewicze and some in various places in the forest outside of the town. After the Jews of Hancewicze were killed, starting from the fall of 1941, several hundred Jewish men, mostly young and capable of working, were taken in groups from Lenin and Pohost Zagorodski towns to a work camp that had been established in Hancewicze. In the beginning of 1942 they were joined by Jews from Łuniniec. On August 14-15, 1942 around 320 prisoners escaped from the camp. The Jews who remained in the camp, as well as several dozen of the escapees, were murdered after they were either caught or had voluntarily returned to the camp. The survivors joined several partisan units in the area. Hancewicze was liberated by the Red Army on July 7, 1944.