Byten

Jews began to settle in Byteń in the late 16th-early 17th centuries. Most of them made their living from the usual Jewish trades of those days – running distilleries, inns, flour mills, etc. In the 19th century, they expanded into the timber trade. Toward the end of that century, a Jew named Gorfinkel set up a textile mill in the town. In 1897, Byteń was home to 1,614 Jews, who made up 60.2 per cent of the total population. In the early 20th century, the township went into economic decline, which caused many of its residents to emigrate. After 1900, cells of socialist parties – Poale Zion and the social democratic Bund – emerged in Byteń. In 1905, the two parties teamed up to organize Jewish self-defense against pogroms. In 1921, Byteń became part of independent Poland. That same year, the first Polish census recorded 739 Jews in the town, making up fifty-eight percent of the total population. The only (private) Hebrew school, which had been opened following the end of World War I, was closed down shortly thereafter. Local Jewish children attended the Polish school, or studied at traditional Jewish Talmud Torahs. In September 1939, World War II began, and Byteń was occupied by the Soviets. About two hundred Jewish refugees from German-occupied western Poland arrived in the town, swelling its Jewish population to 1,000. However, some of these refugees were deported eastward by the Soviet authorities before the Nazi invasion. German troops occupied Byteń on June 25, 1941 (the fourth day of the Soviet-German War). A Jewish council was set up in the town in July 1941, and forced labor was introduced. Jewish laborers were exploited mainly in road repairs and at the nearby railway station. Several confiscations of Jewish property and cash took place in 1941-early 1942. At least forty-eight Jews were killed by the Nazis in small-scale murder operations during that period. In February (or March, according to another source) 1942, the Germans ordered a resettlement of the Jews of nearby Iwacewicze. On the way, a number of them (possibly as many as 200 people) fled to Byteń. As a result, more than 1,200 Jews found themselves crammed in the latter town. In early 1942, some able-bodied Jews were moved from Byteń into the Słonim Ghetto. A ghetto was established in Byteń itself in May-June 1942. In early July 1942, rumors of the Nazi massacre of the Jews of Słonim on June 29 began to circulate in Byteń. The Jews of Byteń began to build bunkers, hoping to hide in them during the imminent mass murder. At dawn on July 25, German gendarmes, Lithuanian auxiliaries, and local Belorussian policemen rounded up the Jews of the Byteń Ghetto, as well as the Jews who had been permitted to live outside the ghetto, at their workplaces and took them to a site about a mile northwest of Byteń, where the Germans shot them. During the roundup, the auxiliaries found many Jews who had attempted to hide in their makeshift bunkers, and killed them on the spot. The skilled Jewish artisans were spared for a while, as were the Jews who had managed to survive the massacre in their shelters. Most of these were murdered later, on August 29, 1942. The last group of fifty-six skilled Jewish workers and their family members were killed by the Nazis in September 1942. Only a handful of Jews from Byteń – those able to join the Soviet partisans – survived the German occupation. Byteń was liberated by the Red Army on July 10, 1944.