Ilja

The first Jews settled in Ilja in the 17th century. The town gained some fame due to the legendary story of the young Polish count Walentyn Potocki who, in the early 18th century, converted to Judaism, was a student of the Vilna Gaon, and became a Torah sage, but was arrested by the Polish authorities and burned at the stake in 1749 for abandoning Christianity. In 1793, the town was annexed to Russia. In 1897, there were 829 Jews in Ilja, or 58 percent of the total population. Their main occupations were trade in agricultural products, including flax, and in lumber, as well as basic crafts. In the 1880s a branch of the proto-Zionist movement Hovevei Ziyon was founded in Ilja. In 1915, during World War I, Cossack troops staged a pogrom in Ilja. After the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920 and the Polish-Lithuanian conflict of 1921-1922, Ilja became part of Poland. In the 1920s Ilja saw the establishment of several Zionist youth groups, including Hehalutz, Hehalutz Hatzair, Gordoniya, and a branch of the revisionist Beitar. However, after the depression of 1930-1932, membership in all such movements declined. A Hebrew school in the town did not succeed as it met with opposition on the part of Orthodox Jews, both Habad Hasidim and mitnagdim. By the end of the 1930s the Jewish population of Ilja was approximately 900. In September 1939 World War II began, and Ilja was occupied by the Red Army. The Soviets nationalized all private properties, but appointed Jews to some leading positions, including that of the town's mayor. Many refugees from the German-occupied territories of Poland swelled Ilja's Jewish population at the end of 1939 and the beginning of 1940. The Soviet-German war began on June 22, 1941, and on July 3, the Germans entered Ilja. Anti-Jewish decrees followed. In September 1941 a ghetto was established. On March 17, 1942, the German Security Police, reinforced by a Latvian police battalion and by the Belorussian auxiliary police assembled all the Jews of Ilja at the market square. A selection followed, during which a minority consisting of skilled workers, together with their families, was returned to the ghetto. The rest, about 520 people, were escorted to the unfinished building for the cold storage of vegetables not far of the village center and shot there. The ghetto in Ilja was liquidated on June 7, 1942. The German police arrived from Wilejka, assembled all the Jewish "skilled workers" who still remained in Ilja and shot them (about 150 persons), at the same place. Since that was in March when the ground was still frozen, the murderers doused the bodies with gasoline and burned them. Ilja was liberated by the Red Army on July 3, 1944.