Wolozyn

The first Jews apparently settled in Wołożyn (Volozhin) in the second half of the 17th century. In 1766 there were 383 Jews in the town. From the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century the Jewish population of the town increased by half (in 1847 they numbered 590), while in the following fifty years it more than quadrupled, with the census of 1897 reporting 2,452 Jews in Wołożyn. One of the sources of the town's wealth and, hence, of the increase in its Jewish population, in addition to the successful trade in agricultural and wood products and the various crafts practiced by Wołożyn's Jews, was the famous misnagid (non-Hassidic) yeshiva "Etz Chaim," that opened in 1802. Among its graduates were famous rabbis like Chaim Ozer Grodzinski and Chaim Soloveitchik, the founders and early leaders of religious Zionism Yitzchak Yaacov Reines and Samuel Mohilever, the Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik, and the Belorussian Yiddish writer Moyshe Kulbak. The Zionist thinker Micha Josef Berdyczewski and the famous tea merchant and philanthropist Zeev Kalonymus Wissotzky also studied for some time in the Volozhin yeshiva. The great fire of 1886 caused considerable damage to the town of Wołożyn, including the yeshiva there. From 1921 to 1939 Wołożyn was part of the Polish Republic with 1,434 Jews living in the town in 1921. During the interwar period a whole constellation of Zionist organizations, from the leftist Poalei Zion to the rightist Beitar and religious Hamizrakhi emerged in Wołożyn. In 1926 alone 50 young Jews left Wołożyn to immigrate the Land of Israel. At the same time Orthodox Jews continued to play a leading role in the local community. Along with a secular Hebrew school of the Tarbut network and a state Polish school, a religious Hebrew school of the Yavneh network and the popular ultra-Orthodox school for girls of the Beis-Yankev network operated in the town. In September 1939, World War II began and the town was occupied by the Soviets. The Soviets closed the Beis Yankev school and transformed the Tarbut school into a Soviet Yiddish-language one. However, the authorities did not close the town's religious institutions. Due to the influx of refugees from western, German-occupied Polish areas, toward the end of the Soviet occupation period there were ca. 3,500 Jews in Wołożyn. On June 22, 1941 German forces attacked the Soviet Union. On June 25 the Germans were already in Wołożyn. Anti-Jewish decrees followed, including one that required the establishment of a Jewish council. In August 1941 the Security Police carried out the first murder "Aktion" in Wołożyn. They selected 45 Jews, took them out of town, ordered them to dig a grave, and then shot them. After that, in the same month, a ghetto was established, with about 3,000 Jews being forced into it, including some refugees from nearby shtetls and from Lithuania. On November 4, 1941 the Germans assembled all the local Jews on one street in the ghetto, selected ca. 200 Jews -- under the pretext that these would be taken to work -- and shot them, along with the chairman of the Jewish council Garber, in the area of the sports ground. Former Volozhiners around the world regard this event as the first German murder operation. On May 10, 1942, the "second" (in fact, the third) murder "Aktion" took place in Wołożyn. On that day a German Security Police company from Wilejka, accompanied by a Latvian collaborationist squad and assisted by members of the German gendarmerie and of the local police, assembled about 1,000 Jews at a local smithy and demanded that they hand over all their money and other valuables. Then the perpetrators shot them. According to one version of the events, all the Jews were killed at the smithy; according to another version, the Nazis took some of them, in groups, to the cemetery and shot them there, while the rest were killed in a building. After the shooting the perpetrators doused the bodies with gasoline and burned them, along with the building. The Security Police company remained in Wołożyn until May 15, 1942, capturing any Jews found in hiding and shooting them. The ghetto was liquidated on August 29, 1942, when about 450 Jews were shot in the basin of the Volozhinka River, east of Dubinskaia Street. Wołożyn was liberated by the Red Army on July 5, 1944.