Lost Jewish Worlds - Lida |
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| Shmuel Spector | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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County
seat. Until the early fourteenth century, the ancient settlement of Lida was a wood fortress. In 1323, Prince Gedimin of Lithuania built a robust stone-and-brick fortress at the site, and thus it withstood Crusader attacks from Prussia in 1392 and 1394. In the seventeenth century it was attacked and damaged several times, and in 1710 the fortress was burned to the ground by the Swedes. It was not rebuilt. Following Gedimin's death, Lithuania was divided into principalities, and Lida became the capital of one such principality, the seat of Prince Olgierd. He was succeeded after his death by his son, Jagello, who in turn was followed by Prince Vitold. Lida was granted Magdeburg rights at a relatively early date, apparently in the early sixteenth century, and they were confirmed by the Polish Sejm in 1776. Inter alia, Lida was permitted to hold two annual fairs, but these were only of slight importance to the local economy. In the mid-sixteenth century Lida became a county seat inthe district (wojewodztwo) of Vilna and the seat of a Starosta, the royal representative. In 1662, an epidemic decimated the town. The Jews Until the End of World War I The origins of Jewish settlement in Lida are obscure, dating, perhaps, to the mid-sixteenth century. In 1579, King Stefan Batory granted the town's Jewish residents a charter of privileges to establish a synagogue. In 1630, King Ladislaus IV permitted them to repair the old synagogue and to build a new one. The existence of a Jewish community (Kehillah) in Lida is mentioned in 1623. Based on the criteria of the Lithuanian Communities' Council (Va'ad Medinat Lita), it was defined as a local settlement and was subordinate to the mother-community of Grodno. In terms of population, Lida was considered a medium-sized community.
*In the Lida kahal (community), including the surroundings (satellite communities) **Including refugees From 1671, the community's rabbi was Rabbi David Lidai, who later moved to Amsterdam; he was succeeded by his son Ptakhiya and his grandson David. The Torah studies of the two were collected by Rabbi David in his book Ir David (City of David). From the beginning of the nineteenth century until 1845, Rabbi Elimelech Kameniecki was the community's spiritual leader, and then, for twenty years after him, his son Rabbi Eliahu Akiva Kameniecki served as a dayan (religious judge) and as a rabbi appointed by the authorities (rav mita'am). After the mid-century Rabbi Eliahu Shick (popularly known as Elinke Lider), a well-known darshan (preacher) and, in the eyes of many, a ba'al-shem (miracle worker), held the rabbinate for a few years. His book, Ein Eliahu, a commentary on the collection of talmudic legends known as Ein Ya'akov, was published in Vilna. In 1886, Rabbi Yitzhak Ya'akov Reines, a sterling personality and a leader of the religious-Zionist camp, became Lida's rabbi. After two unsuccessful attempts to establish a yeshivah, Rabbi Reines finally succeeded in 1905. The fame of the Great Yeshivah of Lida quickly spread throughout the land. It was an institution that espoused tolerance and Zionism. Rabbi Reines died in 1918, in the Hebrew month of Elul. His successor, Rabbi Aharon Rabinovich, would perish in the Holocaust. In the nineteenth century Rabbi Binyamin from Lida gained a reputation as a zaddik, a holy and righteous man. In 1878, the Kuidanov Hassidim, who were based in Lida, asked Rabbi Schlomke from the Kuidanov dynasty to serve as their spiritual leader. A personality who deserves special mention is Rabbi Moses Isaac Darshan, also known as the Kelmer Maggid (1828-1899), the main preacher of the Musar Movement, which put special emphasis on morality and behavior. Rabbi Moses Isaac was born near Slonim. At the age of fifteen he was already known as a preacher; at the age of twenty-one he came to Kovno (Kaunas) to study under Rabbi Israel Lipkin Salanter, the founder of the Musar Movement, who recognized his outstanding abilities as a preacher and his potential influence and charged him with propagating its ideals. For over half a century Moses Isaac was the famous Maggid of the Musar Movement. He accepted positions as a preacher in various communities - among them Kelme in Lithuania (1850-53) - but, essentially, he remained an itinerant preacher, traveling from town to town and preaching the importance of ethical behavior in daily life, both toward Jews and gentiles alike. Rabbi Moses Isaac established scores of philanthropic societies throughout the country, as well as Musar shtiebels (conventicles for the study of Musar) and study courses for poor workers. During a visit to London in 1884, the chief rabbi, Nathan Adler, and Samuel Montagu (the first Lord Swaythling) were extremely impressed with him. His only published work is the Tokhelet Hayim (Vilna, 1897), ten of his sermons which he chose as examples of his teachings. In 1898, the Kelmer Maggid settled in Lida, where he stayed with his son Rabbi Ben Zion Darshan. He died a year later. In addition to Rabbi Reines's yeshivah, religious education was available in the traditional heder and in a Talmud Torah school for the poor. Thanks to financing by the Shokdei Melachah organization, founded in 1887, children from poor families were able to study crafts with established artisans. The boys were obliged to study Hebrew and Russian every evening. Two Jewish public institutions that merit special mention were the hospital and the home for the aged. In the early twentieth century, a government elementary school operated in the town, and, in 1912, a municipal high school was opened. Quite a few Jewish pupils attended both institutions. Several Lida-born cantors gained fame in the years before World War I. Among them were Meir Lider, Noah Lider, and Rabinovich. Zionist activity began in Lida toward the end of the nineteenth century, with the appearance of the Hibbat Zion (Love of Zion) movement. As early as 1885, contributions were collected in all the town's synagogues in order to establish the settlement of Mazkeret Batiya in Palestine. At the initiative of Rabbi Reines, a leader of religious Zionism, the founding conference of the Mizrachi movement was held in Lida in 1902. That year the first cells of the socialist parties - the Bund, Poalei Zion, and the Socialist Zionists - were also created. The members of all these movements would meet secretly in the nearby woods. They conducted propaganda in the synagogues and organized strikes in factories in order to obtain better working conditions and higher wages. In 1905, a joint demonstration by hundreds of members of different parties was held in Lida. The Jews' Economic Life. In the early eighteenth century, most of Lida's Jews made their living as innkeepers and from dealing in agricultural produce. Some were landowners who grew their own crops. We have more detailed information about the community's economic life from the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1862, there were in Lida two merchants in the First Guild, and five in the Third Guild; some, at least, were probably Jews. Of the seventy-six shops and thirty-two other commercial enterprises in the town, most were also apparently Jewish-owned. In 1879, there were in Lida 189 craftsmen, including tobacco-pipe manufacturers; the majority were Jews. Five years later we find mention of three tanneries, apparently belonging to Jews, and two workshops that manufactured Sabbath candles. The building of two railway lines - Warsaw-Siedlce-Lida-Molodeczno and Baranowicze-Lida-Vilna - put Lida on the map and spurred its economic development. A good many new industries were established between the end of the nineteenth century and the start of World War I, including two beer factories, small soft-drink plants, a tobacco-processing factory and two small tobacco factories, a sawmill, a soap factory and a printing press. Nearly all these enterprises were owned by Jews. With the help of ICA (Jewish Colonization Asso- ciation), a cooperative bank also was established. As these data from the second half of the nineteenth century suggest, Lida's Jews were economically well off. Most of them were shopkeepers, peddlers or craftsmen who earned much of their income at nearby fairs. The war seriously disrupted the town's life. Many youngsters were drafted into military service; economic ties with the western regions were cut off; and, as the front drew ever nearer, refugees streamed into town. On September 20, 1915, the German army captured Lida and established a military government. All residents, non-Jews and Jews alike, were inducted into forced labor. Food rationing was introduced. The economic situation deteriorated drastically. Yet despite the hardships, Jewish cultural life continued almost as before. The moadon (social club), the Ha-Zamir choir, the dramatic circle, and many other groups continued to be active. The German occupation lasted until the end of 1917. The entry of the Bolsheviks into Lida in the winter of 1918 stirred a revolutionary wind on the Jewish street. On Passover eve in 1919, the Polish army entered Lida and the soldiers of General Haller mounted a pogrom in which thirty-nine Jews were murdered. In the 1920s, most of the Jews in Lida made their living in commerce, industry and crafts. Most of the industries were owned by Jews, including the factory for rubber boots that was established in 1928 (it was called Ardal, the Hebrew word for rubber boot) and became the second largest factory in Poland, with about 1,000 workers. There were also a nail-casting plant, a chemicals' and paints' factory, two breweries, two cooking-oil factories, five sawmills, five flour mills, and a factory where bricks and porcelain were manufactured. In 1921, there were 302 workshops owned by Jews. Of the town's twenty-three physicians, eighteen were Jews. The Jewish economy was spurred by several banks, of which the most important was the Folksbank (People's Bank), founded in 1922 as a branch of the regional administration in Vilna. In 1925, the bank had 283 members - 183 small merchants, 74 artisans, 8 farmers and 438 professionals from various fields - and it awarded 1,548 loans, totaling 126,976 gulden. The Merchants' Bank was established in 1928, and there was also a Gemilut Hessed (charitable fund) in the town. Rabbi Reines's yeshivah was closed down during the war and did not reopen. In its place a Yeshivah Ketanah (small yeshivah) was opened in 1923, under the auspices of the Yeshivot Committee in Vilna. The Talmud Torah school continued to operate and expanded its regular and Hebrew curriculum. In the early 1920s, a Hebrew kindergarten and elementary school were opened within the framework of the Tarbut network. Between 1926 and 1932, high-school classes were added to the school, but budgetary problems forced their closure. In 1919, the Sholom Aleichem School, which taught in Yiddish, was opened as part of the CISHO network. The institution of the heder also flourished. Some Jewish children attended state elementary schools and non-Jewish high schools run by the state (about 15 percent of the pupils were Jewish), the municipality or the church. Jewish pupils were exempt from studies on the Sabbath. A number of weeklies, all short-lived, were published in Lida. In 1929, the Lider Wochenblatt was founded, followed by the Lider Woch (1932), the Lider Leben (1936), and Unser Ruf (which published only one issue, on April 13, 1934). These papers featured local writers who addressed local issues. A Records Committee (Pinkas Komitet) was established in 1933, in order to collect material for a monograph on the history of the Lida Kehillah. However, the compilation process dragged on, and the project was never completed. The amateur drama circle, which suspended its activities when the war erupted, renewed them under the German occupation (in 1916). After the war a group known as the amateurs of the Hebrew stage was formed, which, together with an affiliated children's choir, mounted productions in Hebrew. A drama group established by the Jewish trade unions performed in Yiddish. Most of the modest revenues from these productions were devoted to the purchase of books for the libraries and for the promotion of other cultural activities, including clubs where lectures were given and circles that met to discuss books and social questions. A large number of Jewish institutions functioned in Lida in the inter-war period: twelve synagogues, a home for the aged, an orphanage, a hospital with eighteen beds in two wards (internal medicine and maternity), two associations that ran hospices for the indigent, a soup kitchen and a branch of the TOZ organization. The latter's ramified activity included day camps for children from poor families, an infant care center, a dairy kitchen for needy mothers, and medical checkups for pupils in the Jewish schools. In the realm of education and culture, there were four Jewish schools, three libraries, five dramatic groups, and evening classes for adults. Lida also had six trade unions, two craftsmen's associations, and three Jewish sports associations. Until the 1930s, there was no elected Va'ad ha-Kehillah (Community Council). The first Council had been created in the early 1920s, under the pressure of American relief organizations, which insisted that an accepted public body supervise the distribution of aid. The Polish government continued to regard the Council as the representative of the Jewish public even after the aid stopped. However, elections based on state regulations were not held until 1932; the last such elections took place on September 6, 1936. The first Zionist movements in Lida during this period were He-Halutz (branch founded in 1923) and Ha-Shomer ha-Za'ir, which, at its peak, numbered 500 members, as did He-Halutz in the mid-1930s. The branch of the He-Halutz ha-Zioni youth movement was the first in the entire Vilna district. In 1927, Dror-Freiheit of Poalei Zion was established, followed by a branch of Betar in 1929, Ha-Noar ha-Zioni in 1931, and, in the spring of 1934, Ha-Shomer ha-Dati. The League of Working Eretz Israel (Eretz Israel ha-Ovedet) was also active in Lida. In 1933, it established the Histadrut ha-Oved labor federation, which included young artisans who prepared themselves for aliyah (immigration to Palestine). Among the Zionist personalities who visited Lida were Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Itzhak Grinboim, Natan Bistritsky and Itzhak Zuckerman. Eleven lists of candidates contested in the 1936 election, and 1,219 eligible voters took part, including 123 from nearby Bielice, which had been co-opted to the community. Only the Revisionists failed to win a seat. The Zionist lists won six seats; Ha-Mizrachi, three; the League for Working Eretz-Israel, two; the Bielice Zionists, one; the organizations of artisans and small merchants, three; and the organization of butchers and the Progressive Democrats together, three seats. Until mid-September 1939, large numbers of refugees streamed into Lida. On September 18, the Red Army entered the town, and Lida was annexed to the Grodno district of the Byelorussian Republic within the Soviet Union. The Soviets turned over Vilna and areas to the southeast to the Lithuanians, and, until June 1940, the border between Independent Lithuania and the Soviet Union ran near Lida. Thus, Lida became a favored destination for the many who wanted to cross the border to Vilna. These included mainly party members, groups preparing themselves for aliyah, and youth movements. However, the Soviet authorities were quick to spot this phenomenon and stepped up their patrols, and many would-be border-crossers were taken prisoner by the Soviet Border Police. The local Jews extended whatever help they could to the new arrivals, housing them and sometimes even trying their hand at ransoming prisoners (by means of bribes). Within a few months the Soviets had introduced their own economic, social, educational, and cultural arrangements. The parties and youth movements were banned and soon disappeared. Public institutions were nationalized, and the Jewish schools were forced to teach in Yiddish and use Soviet curricula and pedagogical methods. Private commerce was eliminated, and the large businesses were also nationalized; some of the wealthy Jews were arrested and exiled. On June 22, 1941, as war broke out between the Soviet Union and Germany, Lida was bombed by the German Luftwaffe. On June 25, German forces neared the town, and, in a major battle, Lida was severely bombed and shelled. Many buildings were destroyed, and some 2,000 residents, including about 500 Jews, were killed. In the late afternoon of June 27, German tanks burst into the town and, by the following day, all of Lida was occupied by the Germans. Together with the army, a unit of the Einsatzgruppe B entered Lida and ordered Jews who were professionals to present themselves. When they did, ninety-two of them (ninety-six, according to a different source) were selected and taken outside the town. There they were humiliated, brutally tortured and finally shot to death. During the first week of the occupation, the representatives of the Jewish community were summoned to the military governor and ordered to set up a Judenrat. After it was formed, the Judenrat consisted of fourteen members, headed by a teacher from the Jewish high school, Kalman Lichtman. One of the first directives was to concentrate all males aged fifteen to sixty in a labor camp, which was dismantled six weeks later. The Judenrat was made responsible for recruiting Jews for forced labor, and this included women aged sixteen to forty. The Jews had to clear rubble and clean the streets; once a day they were given soup and rotting potatoes. The Jews' daily food ration included 125 grams of bread per person. They were forbidden to eat meat, eggs, butter, and other fats. Anyone caught violating this was executed. Notices in German, Polish, and Russian were frequently posted on the streets to announce severe anti-Jewish restrictions and decrees. Many Jews were ordered to leave their homes, and all were forced to wear an outer badge of their Jewishness, which, after many variations, was finalized as a yellow patch on the breast and back. Jews needed a special permit to walk on the streets, and those who received one were forbidden to use the sidewalks. Non-Jews were barred from talking to Jews or maintaining any form of commercial relations with them. The supervisors of the forced labor were ordered to report every instance of tardiness that had not received official or medical authorization; a few days after that order came into effect, sixteen were executed for not arriving on time for work. In December 1941, all the Jews of Lida were concentrated in a ghetto in one of the suburbs of the town - an area of small houses - and several families were forced to crowd into a single room. At this time Aktionen were being carried out in Vilna, and a few hundred Jewish survivors fled from there to Lida. By paying off Polish municipal clerks, the Judenrat was able to obtain residence permits for the refugees. However, not long afterward a group of Jews was caught while trying to steal the Jewish property that had been left for safekeeping with the local priest. The thieves were taken to prison. Their wives demanded that the Judenrat intercede to obtain their release. When the Judenrat refused to act, the detainees told the authorities about the permits the Judenrat had arranged for the Vilna refugees and promised to disclose the identity of the latter as well. On March 1, 1942, all the town's Jews were assembled in the square next to the new post office. They were then made to walk through a narrow passage, where one of the thieves identified five people. They were immediately arrested and two days later were shot to death in the prison courtyard. Some 200 sick and elderly Jews who could not get to the site were murdered in their lodgings. A week later a number of the Judenrat's senior figures, including the chairman, Lichtman, were arrested, tortured, and murdered. The Jews were ordered to choose a new Judenrat within twenty-four hours, but no candidates could be found. Finally Dr. Charny accepted the position. The anti-Jewish measures were constantly intensified. Electric power to Jewish homes was cut off, and the Jews were ordered to hand over all their electrical utensils, copperware, and furs. At the initiative of engineer Altman, from Steinberg's foundry, workshops were set up in the ghetto; the products were shipped to Germany. The machines and raw materials came from factories that had closed down in and around the town. The area of the workshops was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, but the guards remained outside and only Jews filled the supervisory and administrative posts. As evening fell on May 7, 1942, the ghetto was sealed and surrounded by a chain of German police and their local Byelorussian and Polish henchmen. The major Aktion began on May 8. The Jews were removed from their residences family by family and ordered to form in threes. The police first carried out a selection of the professionals who were still needed and had certificates. However, they soon tired of this and included all the rest in the group of the condemned, without paying heed to their profession. The guards abused the detainees incessantly, beating them with blunt instruments and iron rods. One Jew tried to foment a rebellion, calling on his fellows to rip out stones, throw them at the Germans, and flee en masse - but no one acted. The town's spiritual leader, Rabbi Aharon Rabinovich, tried to keep up the people's spirits and urged them not to cry, as this only gave the Germans satisfaction. Most of the Jews from the ghetto, including the Jews of Bielice, were taken to the military firing range not far from the town. They were murdered in groups, in pits which had been prepared before. The children were separated from their parents, thrown into a pit, and murdered with hand grenades; the adults were forced to strip and lie down in the pits, where they were shot with automatic weapons by a SD murder squad. Many were only wounded but died of suffocation. Only one succeeded in escaping from a death pit after being wounded. He returned to the ghetto, underwent surgery secretly, related everything he had seen, and then went to join the partisans in the forests. According to an official estimate (by the Soviet Commission to Investigate Nazi War Crimes), 5,670 people were murdered on May 8, 1942, in Lida. Following the Aktion, 1,500 Jewish professionals remained - those who had been separated in the selection process - and their number grew as refugees arrived from towns such as Woronowa, Iwje, Radun, Zholudek, and elsewhere. All together there were some 4,000 people huddled in the ghetto. On July 8, 120 of them, the staff from the town's psychiatric hospital, were executed. On September 18, 1943, the ghetto was again surrounded by police troops. The Jews were told that they were being taken to Lublin for work. In fact they were herded to the train station, crammed into closed boxcars, and taken to Majdanek. There they were murdered. A few small groups succeeded in escaping from the train and joined the partisans. A Zionist underground organization had been established in Lida during the period of Soviet rule. Its activists were from Ha-Noar ha-Zioni and Betar. After the authorities carried out arrests among them for distributing leaflets to teachers and pupils during the Hanukkah holiday in December 1939, the underground activity came to a stop. The Nazis' decrees and murderous actions brought about efforts to organize a fighting underground, particularly following the large Aktion of May 1942. Eventually the organization numbered about 120 members. They were able to obtain captured arms from the storerooms in the former Polish barracks; and the Jews doing forced labor also sometimes managed to steal arms and spare parts and smuggle them into the ghetto. Some arms were purchased from non-Jews at extravagant prices - 20,000-25,000 rubles for a rifle and 10,000-15,000 for a pistol - and with the unremitting fear that the sellers would inform on their clients to the Germans. Nevertheless, the organization was able to collect thirty-three rifles, ammunition, grenades, and cold weapons. One of the group's leaders, Baruch Levin, ran a manufacturing workshop in the ghetto, which also repaired faulty firearms and turned out knives, axes, and the like. The underground also set up a small printing press, which they smuggled in boxes to the forest for the use of the partisans. The ghetto leaders looked askance at the underground. The chief opponents of the resistance activities were the heads of the workshops, Altman and Alperstein. They fervently wanted to believe the Germans' reassurances that the workshops were essential and their guarantees that the lives of the Jews employed there would be spared. From the autumn of 1942 until the final liquidation of the ghetto on September 18, 1943, at least twenty groups reached the forests from Lida; the largest numbered a few dozen people and the smallest only a few individuals. At the very last moment, in September 1943, another fifty fled to the woods. Most of the members of these groups were youngsters, but there were also adults and even some elderly people. Many were professionals in high demand, such as physicians, who were desperately needed by the partisans. Arms were scarce; often only one rifle was available for an entire group. Most of those who fled reached the Jewish partisan battalion of the Bielski brothers. On three separate occasions the battalion sent emissaries to the Lida ghetto in order to bring out Jews. Some of those who fled Lida reached the Iskra partisans' battalion. Lida was liberated by the Soviet army in July 1944. About 150 Jews from the woods and other hiding places returned to the town, but not for long. Most of them soon began making their way westward. Today there are no Jews in Lida. Shalom Cholawski, The Jews In Byelorussia (White Russia) During World War II (Hebrew), Tel Aviv, 1970. Josef Judelewitz, Lida - Town of My Early Years (Hebrew), Kefar Saba, 1965. Baruch Levin, In the Forests of Vengeance (Hebrew), Tel Aviv, 1968. Sepher Lida (The Book of Lida; Hebrew), edited by Alexander Manor et al., Tel Aviv, 1970. |
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