Brody

Jews began to live in Brody, which was then part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in the late 16th century. Already in the late 16th-early 17th centuries, there was a "Jewish street" in the town, and local Jews enjoyed extensive privileges, which were granted to them by the Polish lord of Brody.

From the second half of the 17th century, the Jews of Brody suffered greatly from natural disasters, foreign invasions, and conflicts with their non-Jewish neighbors. Nevertheless, on the eve of the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, the Jewish community of Brody had some 8,000 members, and was the largest community of its kind in all of Poland.

In the 18th century, Brody was an important Jewish religious center. In the mid-18th century, the religious leaders of the town issued a cherem (excommunication) edict against the self-proclaimed "messiah" Jacob Frank and his followers, and against the nascent Chassidic movement.

In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, Brody was incorporated into the Austrian (later Austro-Hungarian) Empire. Initially, the economic situation of the local Jews deteriorated, as a result of the policy of forced modernization and "productivisation" pursued by the Austrian authorities vis-à-vis the Empire's Jewish subjects. However, the community recovered very quickly, and already in the late 18th century Brody became known as the "Jewish Amsterdam of the East," with Jews dominating the town's economic life. In the early 19th century, most of the businesses in the town were owned by Jews, and the local community continued to flourish until the end of that century. The economic prosperity of the Jews of Brody went hand-in-hand with their growing involvement in political life on both the local and the national levels. At the same time, the 19th century saw the further development of Jewish communal institutions in Brody. As early as 1815, a Jewish hospital was built in the town, and it was followed by a host of other welfare institutions.

In the late 18th-early 19th centuries, Brody became an important center of Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, and several prominent adherents of the movement (e.g., Mendel Lapin and Yakov-Shmuel Byk) lived and worked in the town. In the 1860s, well before the rise of Zionism, the study of the Hebrew language began to spread in Brody. Several organizations were established in the town to promote Hebrew education. However, despite the opening of several general Jewish schools (including ones with Hebrew as the language of instruction) in Brody during the 19th century, most of the town's Jewish children continued to attend the religious schools.

At the turn of the century, a large segment of the Jews of Brody identified themselves politically as Zionists, although non-Zionist socialist and Orthodox parties and groups were also present in the local political landscape.

Shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Brody was occupied by the Russian Army. The local Jewish population suffered greatly under this occupation, since the Russian Cossack troops assaulted Jews, raped Jewish women, and looted and destroyed Jewish property. Most of the wealthy Jews left Brody during this period. The occupying authorities also deported local Jews into the Russian interior. Even after the return of the town under Austrian control in 1915, the situation of its Jews remained precarious, because of their proximity to the front lines.

In 1919, following the end of World War I, the Jews of Brody found themselves briefly within the borders of the short-lived Western Ukrainian Republic. At this time, they suffered from the depredations of the Ukrainian nationalists, who assaulted them physically and looted and destroyed their property. A Jewish National Committee was established in Brody in order to assist needy Jews. However, this body proved inadequate to its task, given the magnitude of the problems it had to tackle.

The situation of the town's Jews stabilized somewhat after 1920, when Brody became part of the Second Polish Republic. In 1921, the town was home to 7,202 Jews, who made up 66.3 percent of the total population. In the interwar period, most local Jews maintained their traditional occupations as traders and artisans, and they now also suffered from competition on the part of Polish and Ukrainian cooperatives, from the discriminatory economic policies of the Polish authorities, and from the boycott movement that emerged in the late 1930s.

In the interwar period, the Zionist parties and the Orthodox Agudath Israel party enjoyed the support of the majority of the Jews of Brody.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Brody had a number of Jewish educational institutions, including a seven-year Polish-language public school, a Hebrew-language supplementary school, a vocational school for girls, a kindergarten, and an orphanage.

Jewish cultural activities in interwar Brody took place within the framework of Zionist bodies. In 1929, the Yiddish-language Broder Vokhenblat newspaper was launched in Brody, and it was published on an irregular basis in subsequent years.

On September 20, 1939, following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Brody was occupied by the Red Army. The town's factories and shops were nationalized, and the Jewish Community Council was disbanded. In early January 1940, a number of prominent merchants and community leaders were deported into the Soviet interior. The summer of that year saw the deportation of some of the many refugees who had flocked to Brody from western and central Poland in October-November 1939.

German troops occupied Brody on June 29, 1941. In the first few months of the occupation, several hundred Jews, mostly members of the professional intelligentsia and former Soviet activists, were murdered on the northern outskirts of the town. The town's remaining Jews were ordered to wear armbands with the Star of David and subjected to various discriminatory measures.

In July 1941, a Judenrat was formed in Brody, and its primary task was supplying the Germans with forced laborers. In December 1941, Jews from Brody began to be deported to forced labor camps in the area. Throughout late 1941-early 1942, Jews were murdered in and around the town. In March 1942, the deportations of Jews from Brody to the Bełżec death camp began. In the course of 1942, several thousand local Jews were deported to Bełżec, while those deemed "non-transportable" were murdered in Brody itself. In December 1942, a ghetto was established in Brody, and it housed the surviving Jews of the town and of nearby localities. Its inmates suffered from overcrowding, hunger, and epidemics. Many of them were either killed on the spot or deported to death camps in a series of murder operations that took place in March and May 1943. In parallel to the establishment of the ghetto, a labor camp for Jewish artisans was also set up. The Brody Ghetto was liquidated on May 21, 1943, and its remaining inmates, who numbered about 2,000, were deported to the Sobibor death camp. The labor camp was liquidated in the summer of 1943, and its inmates were murdered outside of town.

Some of the Jews of Brody tried to resist the Germans, forming an underground organization in the ghetto itself and escaping into the forests to fight as partisans. However, these attempts ultimately failed.

The Red Army liberated Brody on July 18, 1944.