Tarnopol

The earliest reference to the existence of a Jewish community in Tarnopol dates to the mid-16th century. In 1550 Tarnopol Jews were granted the right to settle in all parts of the city, except for the market square. The Jews of Tarnopol were charged with defending the synagogue, which abutted the city wall. Most of Tarnopol's Jews fled the city during the uprising (1648-1649) of Bogdan Chmelnitsky; those who remained were slaughtered by the Cossacks. The revival of the Jewish community of Tarnopol started in the late 17th century. In the late 18th century most of Tarnopol's Jews engaged in crafts or in the grain or cattle trades. In 1772, as a result of the First Partition of Poland, Tarnopol became part of the Austrian (later the Austro-Hungarian) Empire. In 1788 a Jewish school, with German as the language of instruction, was opened in Tarnopol, but it was closed several years later due to protests on the part of local Orthodox Jews. In the early 19th century Tarnopol became an important center of the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment). In the second half of the 19th century assimilationist ideas began to spread among the adherents of Haskala ideas in Tarnopol. In the late 19th century the Jews of Tarnopol started to become active politically. At the end of the 19th century Tarnopol became a center of proto-Zionist and Zionist activity. In 1880 13,468 Jews lived in Tarnopol, where they constituted 52.2 percent of the city's total population. World War I severely affected the Jewish community of Tarnopol. In the summer of 1914 the city was occupied by Russian troops. The economic situation of the city's Jews worsened due to the break-up of traditional trade ties, as well as to the influx of a large number of Jewish refugees from the war zone. The Russian retreat in the summer of 1917 was accompanied by widespread looting in the city. In November 1918, after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Tarnopol became the capital of the short-lived West Ukrainian National Republic, which became embroiled in the war against the restored Poland. Most of Tarnopol's Jews maintained neutrality in the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, but some joined the Jewish battalion of the West Ukrainian army, which participated in the fighting against Polish troops. The Jewish militia that was formed in the city also functioned as a Jewish self-defense force. In early 1919 it prevented a pogrom attempted by Ukrainian peasants from the surrounding villages. During the Soviet-Polish war of 1920-1921 the Jewish population of Tarnopol suffered from assaults by both warring parties. For the most of the interwar period Tarnopol was part of Poland. During this time the Jewish community was unable to reach its prewar level of prosperity. In the 1920s and 1930s the productivity level and extent of trade of Jewish businesses were reduced. The branches of all Jewish political parties - Zionist ones, the Socialist Bund, and the Orthodox Agudath Israel existed in the city. Between the two world wars Ternopol had a wide range of Jewish educational institutions. The largest of these was the Yosef Perl primary school, where general subjects were taught alongside traditional Jewish ones. The city also had schools of the Tarbut and Mizrachi networks, where the teaching was carried out in Hebrew, as well as a religious, Talmud Torah, school and two private gymnasia. In 1931 13,999 Jews lived in Tarnopol, where they comprised 39.3 percent of the city's total population. In September 1939 Tarnopol became part of the Soviet Union. Under the new rulers Jewish political activity was banned and many of the well-to-do Jews were repressed and their property was confiscated. Soviet terror also affected the Jewish refugees from western and central areas of Poland, thousands of whom came to Tarnopol after Germany invaded Poland. Tarnopol was occupied by German troops on July 2, 1941. Immediately after the start of the occupation, Ukrainian nationalists and Germans carried out a pogrom which lasted for a week and claimed the lives of between several hundred and several thousand Jews. Soon after the pogrom, Sonderkommando 4b of Einsatzgruppe C murdered about 100 Jewish members of the local intelligentsia. In late July 1941 a Jewish council (Judenrat) and Jewish police force were established. The Judenrat was required by the Germans to register all of Tarnopol's Jews, to inform the Jews that they had to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David, to provide manpower for work from Jews age 14 to 60, and to collect from the Jews a "contribution" of about one million rubles. In September 1941 the Jews of Tarnopol were incarcerated in a ghetto, the first one in Eastern Galicia to be walled off and surrounded by barbed wire. Thousands of Jews were sent to the labor camps both inside and outside the city, and were used for road construction and other grueling work. On March 25, 1942 near the city the Germans shot about one thousand Jews deemed unfit for work. In August and September 1942 a total of about 5,000 Tarnopol Jews were deported to the Belzec death camp. In late 1942-early 1943 part of the ghetto was allocated for a labor camp or so-called Jewish camp (Julag). This was considered to be as a subdivision of the Janowska labor camp in Lwow. The Jews in the ghetto of Tarnopol were regularly subjected to a "selection", with the able-bodied being sent to the 'Julag" and those deemed unfit for work being shot on the outskirts of or outside Tarnopol. In June 1943 the Tarnopol ghetto was liquidated and its remaining inmates put to death. In July or early August 1943 the Germans also liquidated the Jewish labor camp in the city. About 100 of its inmates were sent to the Janowska labor camp in Lwow while the rest murdered on the outskirts of Tarnopol. The liquidation of the Jewish labor camp in Tarnopol was met armed resistance on the part of some of its inmates. According to various estimates, a total of about 11,000 Tarnopol Jews were murdered in Tarnopol itself and about 6,000 more were deported to the Belzec death camp. Tarnopol was liberated by the Red Army on April 15, 1944.