Zloczow

The presence of Jews in Złoczów is first mentioned in the late 16th century, when the town was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the 17th century, a Jewish community was established there. The Jews of Złoczów made their living primarily from trade and the crafts. In the 18th century, Złoczów was an important Jewish spiritual center, and home to a number of prominent rabbis, including Rabbi Eliezer, known as the Gaon of Złoczów. In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, Złoczów became part of the Austrian (and later the Austro-Hungarian) Empire. However, the local Jews were little affected by this change at first, and they continued to practice their traditional occupations. The construction of a railroad network around Złoczów in the 1870s gave an economic boost to the town as a whole, and to its Jews in particular. In 1900, the town was home to 5,401 Jews, who made up 45.6 percent of the total population. At the turn of the century, Złoczów had branches of the Zionist Poale Zion party and the anti-Zionist Galician Jewish Social Democratic Party. From the late 19th century until the end of World War I, two Jews served as mayors of the town. Following the outbreak of World War I, Złoczów was occupied by Russian troops. For the next year, the town remained under their control, and a number of prominent members of the local community were arrested and deported into the Russian interior. At the same time, Jewish refugees from the surrounding localities arrived in Złoczów, and its Jewish community set up a committee to assist both the new arrivals and the native Jews, who were suffering under the Russian occupation. At the end of the World War I, Złoczów found itself within the borders of the short lived West Ukrainian National Republic. This period, which lasted until May 1919, witnessed an upsurge of Jewish cultural and political life in the town. However, the local Jews suffered from the political instability that plagued the area. In March 1919, peasants from the surrounding villages invaded Złoczów, plundering and destroying Jewish property. In May 1919, Złoczów was occupied by Polish troops, and became part of the Second Polish Republic. The entry of the Polish army into Złoczów was accompanied by physical violence against the local Jews and the introduction of various discriminatory measures, such as the expulsion of Jewish students from a gymnasium and the sacking of the town’s Jewish mayor. In 1920, during the Polish-Soviet War, the town was briefly occupied by the Red Army, which nationalized Jewish businesses and forced Jews to dig defensive trenches. In 1921, there were 5,744 Jews in Złoczów, comprising 51.6 percent of the total population. In the interwar period, Jews played a prominent role in the town's economic life. All the stalls in the town’s market square were owned by Jews. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were two Jewish financial institutions in Złoczów: the Cooperative Trade Bank, which was run by the Zionists, and the religious Gmilut Chasadim fund. The political sympathies of most of the Jews of Złoczów in the period between the two world wars were divided between the Zionist parties and the Orthodox Agudath Israel party. In the 1920s and 1930s, most of the Jewish children in Złoczów attended general Polish schools. The town was also home to several private general and vocational Jewish schools with Hebrew as the language of instruction, along with a private Jewish kindergarten and a short-lived seminary for Hebrew teachers. Two prominent Jewish natives of Złoczów were the poet Naftali Herz Imber, the author of Hatikvah, the anthem of the Zionist movement (and, later, of the State of Israel); and the chemist Roald Hoffmann, winner of the Nobel prize in chemistry. In the late 1930s, the Jews of Złoczów increasingly suffered from antisemitism. The local Jewish cemetery was desecrated; antisemitic posters were put up throughout the town, and Jews were physically assaulted. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, many hundreds of Jewish refugees from western and central Poland, which had been overrun by the Germans, arrived in Złoczów, and were assisted by the local Jewish community. Shortly afterward, Złoczów, along with the rest of Eastern Galicia, was annexed by the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities disbanded all the Jewish communal institutions in the town. The new regime dealt a heavy blow to the Jewish economy in Złoczów. The blanket ban on private economic activity left many local Jews without means of existence. All educational activities in languages other than Yiddish were likewise banned. The Jewish artisans were organized in cooperatives. Many of the Jewish refugees who had come to the town in September 1939, and who had refused the offer of Soviet citizenship in 1940, were deported into the interior of the USSR. Złoczów was occupied by German troops on July 2, 1941, ten days after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War. Very few Jews had been able to leave the town in the intervening period. Two days after the onset of the occupation, Ukrainian nationalists organized a large-scale pogrom in Złoczów, which claimed the lives of a large number of local Jews. In mid-July 1941, a Judenrat, headed by the former deputy mayor of Złoczów, Sigmund Maiblum, was organized, along with a Jewish police force. The first task imposed on the Judenrat by the occupying authorities was carrying out a census of all the Jews remaining in the town after the pogrom, and registering the victims of the pogrom. Later on, the Judenrat received a stream of demands for forced labor and contributions. Thus, in August 1941 the Jewish population of Złoczów had to pay four million rubles to the occupiers. The freedom of movement of the local Jews was severely curtailed, and their economic activities were virtually paralyzed. Many of them faced starvation already in late 1941. To alleviate their predicament, the Złoczów Judenrat organized a public soup kitchen. Additionally, a branch of the Jewish Social Self-Help Organization was set up in Złoczów, to assist the needy and sick Jews. In November 1941, the Jews of Złoczów began to be deported to forced labor camps in the area. In late August and early November 1942, some 5,000 Jews from Złoczów were deported to the Belzec death camp. In early December 1942, several thousand of the remaining Jews of Złoczów and the surrounding localities were forced into a ghetto, which encompassed a small area with dilapidated houses. The ghetto inmates suffered from overcrowding, hunger, and poor sanitary conditions. Many of them succumbed to repeated outbreaks of typhus. The Złoczów Ghetto existed for less than half a year. In early April 1943, it was liquidated, and its inmates were murdered near the village of Jelechowice, a few kilometers from the town. Further killings of Jewish survivors – who had gone into hiding during the massacres, but were ultimately discovered – took place throughout 1943 near Jelechowice and at the Jewish cemetery in Złoczów. The few Jewish artisans remaining in the ghetto area after the massacre of April 1943 tried unsuccessfully to escape into the forests to organize a resistance cell. Most of them died, either in the forest or in the former ghetto itself. The Red Army liberated Złoczów on July 18, 1944.