History of Belarus

History of Belarus

           Jews First arrived in Belarus from that the fourteenth century when that the Grand Prince Vytautas of Lithuania Awarded charters to Jews in Brest and Grodno. Between 1624 and 1764 the Vast Majority of Jew communities in Belarus belonged to that the Vaad of Lithuania. As a Result of the division of Poland, Belarus became a part of the Russian Empire. The region was an essential center of Jew learning. Towards the end of the following century, the Hasidic movement gathered followers, owing to the attempts of Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and even Shneur Zalman of Liady. The Lubavitch Hasidic movement, founded in southern Belarus, spread quickly and broadly. 

       Followers of that the Karlin Stolin and Indura Koidanov Hasidic Rebbes lived in southern Belarus. Approximately 200, 000 Jews lived in Belarus by the early 19th century. By mid-century, the amount increased to 500, 000, and by 1897 the Jew population numbered 724, 548. Many Jews worked in the timber, grain, and flax trades. Nevertheless, by the second 50% of the 19th century, the financial situation among large sections of the Jew population deteriorated, causing a wave of mass emigration that continued well into the Twentieth Century. In 1931 Polish western Belarus had Jew inhabitants of 283, 300. 

          Jews lived compactly in towns and small cities, with modernization and acculturation moving more slowly than in the BSSR. Most Jews continued to function as tradesmen and people as well as Jew spiritual and cultural life developed, albeit without state support. Throughout this time, that the Bund, that the various Zionist groups and Agudas Yisroel remained active, although quite a few Jews were drawn to that the Communist Party. Jews in this area enjoyed relative autonomy in education, together with school systems like Tarbut, Tsysho, and Yavneh. With that the outbreak of World War II and that the Red Army's job of western Belarus, that the Soviets banned all independent political action and started to persecute non-communist social and political activists, affluent segments of people and reps of the national intelligentsia. 

              According to surviving data, from 1939 through Feb 1941 a total of 10, 333 Jews from Polish vagabonds annexed to that the BSSR were sent to that the Gulag. When the Germans invaded in that the late summer of 1941, approximately 690, 000 Jews were living in southern and western Belarus. It's estimated that from 137, 000 to 142, 000 Jews were evacuated, mainly from big cities in the southern part of the republic. The first mass executions of Jews took place in early July 1941. By Feb 1942, the greater part of the Jew inhabitants of Belarus, including that the ghettos of Bobruisk, Vitebsk, and Gomel, had been destroyed. In 1942 and 1943, Jew communities in the rest of the regions, including that the large ghettos of Brest, Grodno, and Pinsk, were also annihilated.