Wilejka

The presence of Jews in Wilejka is first documented in the 18th century, but they are likely to have settled there earlier. In 1897, the year of the first Russian census, the town was home to 1,328 Jews, who constituted 37 percent of the total population. Most of Wilejka's Jews were affiliated with the Chabad or the Koidanov Hasidic movements, while a minority followed the "Lithuanian" (or "misnaged") stream of Judaism. In 1903, the town had a branch of the socialist Bund party, while the first Zionist circles emerged only later. The Jewish community suffered during World War I and the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920: In 1915, Wilejka saw street fighting between the Germans and the Russians, with the Jews being caught in the middle. The Poles, who managed to gain control of the town in 1920, accused the Jews of pro-Soviet sympathies, and this led to further abuse and repression. In 1920, Wilejka became part of the Polish Republic, and the subsequent years witnessed a flourishing of Jewish political and cultural life. In addition to Zeirei Zion and the Bund, the General Zionists, Poalei Zion, and the religious Agudas Yisroel party began to operate in the town in the early 1920s, as did movements such as Brit Zohar and HeHalutz. In the 1930s, local branches of Hashomer Hatzair, Hanoar Hazioni, and Beitar were opened. Some local Jews joined the non-Jewish Polish Socialist Party (PPS). After 1918, the town saw the opening of the Herzliya Hebrew-language school, which later joined the Tarbut network. A Yiddish school and a religious school for girls operated alongside it. Some Jewish children attended a Polish state school and a state-sponsored high school. There were about 1,000 Jews in Wilejka on the eve of World War II. Following the outbreak of war in September 1939, the town was annexed to the Soviet Union. Wilejka was occupied by the German army on June 26, 1941, four days after the German invasion of the USSR. Anti-Jewish decrees and orders followed: Jews were prohibited from using the sidewalks and leaving the town; they had to wear an identification mark in the form of a Star of David, and were mobilized for forced labor. The Germans found only 1,000 Jews in Wilejka in June 1941. However, during the occupation period they would occasionally deport the Jewish inhabitants of other localities to the town. Jews from Kurzeniec, Kobylnik, and some other nearby localities – and from as far away as the town of Baranowicze (in late August 1941) – were incarcerated in several small ghettos and labor camps established in Wilejka in July 1941 and later. For this reason, the total number of Jews killed in Wilejka far exceeded 1,000. On July 12, 1941, Sonderkommando 7a of the SS conducted the first murder operation in Wilejka: 140 people, most of them Jews, were killed in the Maluny Stawskie Forest near the settlement of Stawek. On July 30, 1941, Einsatzkommando 9 carried out a second mass murder, this time in the Lipniki Forest west of Wilejka. This massacre claimed the lives of 400 Jews. Sporadic killings of individual Jews went on in the town throughout the fall and winter of 1941-1942. On March 2, 1942 (the eve of Purim), the Nazis carried out their third massacre of Jews. During this murder operation, the Wilejka SD rounded up about 300 Jews on the pretext of transferring them to another ghetto, took them to the town prison, subjected them to a selection, and shot most of them in the prison courtyard. According to certain accounts, the Germans transported some victims in trucks to the southwestern exit from the town (along the Osipowicze road), shot them, and cremated the bodies in an abandoned wooden structure. That was the usual modus operandi of the Wilejka SD. After these three operations, there were still some Jewish workers left in the town, most of them non-natives who had been brought to Wilejka from elsewhere. The majority of them were exterminated in two additional murder operations: on November 7, 1942, when 70-80 "useless" Jews, including the members of the Wilejka Jewish council, were killed; and on March 28, 1943, when the Germans massacred 40-60 Jewish craftsmen deemed "no longer fit for work". The last Jewish workers imprisoned in Wilejka, mainly deportees from Mołodeczno and other localities, were killed either in late 1943 (according to some accounts) or in June 1944, mere days before the German retreat from the area (according to others). Wilejka was liberated by the Red Army on July 2, 1944.