Bielsk Podlaski

Please read: An Introduction to Bielsk, by Mark W. Gordon

Yizkor Book: Book in the Holy Memory of the Bielsk Podliask Jews

Welcome to the ShtetLinks site for Bielsk Podlaski (also known in Yiddish as Bielsk Podliask). We hope this site will help you learn more about your ancestral shtetl, how your ancestors lived and perhaps help you discover names of ancestors or relatives. Some original source materials listing names of people from Bielsk Podlaski are contained in this site. This site also contains links to external resources pertaining to our shtetl and Jewish life in Poland. If you have photos, documents, stories or materials that you would like to contribute to this site, or if you find any errors, please email the coordinator, who will be happy to assist with the scanning of photos or other materials you may have. Remember to bookmark this page.

TRANSLATION ASSISTANCE NEEDED: If you are able to translate these names (image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4) of Bielsk residents who perished in the Holocaust please contact the site coordinator.

NOTICE: A group of Bielsk Podlaski historians is seeking any testimonies, photographs, historical materials, etc. concerning the history of Jews in Bielsk and nearby Orla.  This request is part of a broader initiative which aims to remember the area's rich Jewish history and to educate current city residents about Bielsk's past.  As part of these endeavors, a special all-Jewish issue of Bielski Hostinec, the local historic journal, was published in October 2010; a series of educational seminars were organized; and an outdoor display board was erected on November 26, 2010 to showcase the former Jewish community.  The next efforts are to translate the Bielsk Podlaski Yizkor Book into Polish to make its rich content available to current residents and to prepare a photo exhibition to be displayed in the Old City Hall (Ratusz).  If you would be able to provide some information, photographs, stories or other materials about the Bielsk Jewish experience, or if you know where to find such items, please contact W. Kononczuk at wojtekk7@wp.pl.  Thanks for your interest in preserving the legacy of Bielsk's Jewish community.

Source Materials

• The entire Bielsk Podlaski Yizkor book is available online at the New York Public Library.
• Tour the Bielsk Podlaski Virtual Cemetery, containing a list of legible headstones linked to a photo of each stone, and a link to a report in the International Cemetery Project on status of the Jewish cemetery in Bielsk Podlaski.
• The Bielsker Bruderlicher Unterstitzungs Verein (translated as Brotherly Assistance Society) was a mutual aid society established by people from Bielsk Podlaski. Materials available on this site include a membership directory and pages from souvenir journals with many names of people from Bielsk Podlaski and surrounding areas who belonged to this society founded in New York. The souvenir journals are a testament to the rich social activities of the Verein.  Now includes the complete Souvenir Journal of the Loan Fund's 20th Anniversary Banquet, the BBUV's incorporation papers from 1888 and the complete 1928 40th Anniversary Souvenir Journal.
• Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland (Pinkas Hakehillot Polin), chapter on Bielsk
• Letters to Herbert Hoover from the children of the Second Jewish Kitchen in Bielsk, Jewish Orphanage No. 4, and Jewish Kitchen No. 4 in Siemiatycze, Bielsk Province.
• 1911 - 1912 Russian Business Directory.
• 1928 Business Directory.
• 1930 Business Directory.
• 1936 Phone Directory.
• 1937 Phone Directory.
• Video of Jewish Cemtery in Bielsk Podlaski.

Jewish Life in the Old Country

While not specific to Bielsk Podlaski these materials can perhaps give us a glimpse of the life our ancestors lived.

• Virtual Shtetl - Bielsk Podlaski
• Philosophers, Fiddlers and Fools (2001) (2002) (2003) (2004) (2005). This wonderful and moving program contains music, stories and memories from a world now vanished. (requires free RealPlayer software).
• Jewish Short Stories From Eastern Europe and Beyond, (requires free RealPlayer software).
• Jewish Stories From the Old World to the New, (requires free RealPlayer software).

• The Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive's Virtual Cinema has a number of films that you can view for free on the Internet. These films can provide an idea of how our ancestors might have lived in Poland before the Holocaust. Films include the following five taken in 1939 before the holocaust:
  • Jewish Life In Bialystok (including footage of the great synagogue in Bialystok and a young girl eating a bialy)
  • A Day In Warsaw
  • Jewish Life In Cracow
  • Jewish Life In Lvov
  • Jewish Life In Vilna
  • other films about Jewish communities, the Holocaust, early Zionism and Israeli statehood.

  You will need Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player to view the films at the Virtual Cinema.

• The Yiddish Radio Project special report on NPR, The Yiddish Radio Project web site. (requires free RealPlayer software).
• The Yiddish Voice, links to Yiddish audio on the web. (requires free RealPlayer software).
• The Wolf Lewkowicz Collection, a set of almost 200 Yiddish letters (with English translations) written by Wolf Lewkowicz, sent from Poland to his nephew in the United States, Sol J. Zissman, from 1922 to 1939. They provide insight into Jewish life in pre-war Poland.
• Official website of the Community of Bielsk Podlaski. English sections on history and tourism have since been removed and made no mention of the local Jewish history. One page in English remains. 

Archival Holdings

• Search the Ellis Island database for records of immigrants from Bielsk Podlaski. Searching for Bielsk, without using a surname, returns 1,171 records. Searching for Billsk returns 19 records.
• Locate records of Jewish passengers in the Ellis Island database. This is not a complete database of all Jewish immigrants through Ellis Island but may be of great assistance in locating your ancestors.
• The Auschwitz searchable database allows you to search for records of those murdered at Auschwitz by name, place of birth (Bielsk Podlaski - 4 records, Bielsk -5 records), and last residence (Bielsk Podlaski - 2 records). You can also visit the English web site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. 
• The JewishGen All Poland Database, containing over 2 million entries for individuals from Poland.
• Bielsk Podlaski holdings in Eastern European archives identified by the Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation. The RTR inventory shows holdings in five different archives. Materials include census records taken in eleven different years, birth, death, marriage, emigration, army and notary records.
• Bielsk Podlaski holdings identified by Jewish Records Indexing - Poland. This list is a subset of of the holdings identified by the Routes to Roots Foundation. You may search for ancestors records on JRI-PL.
• JewishGen InfoFile - Polish Archives Holdings of Jewish Vital Records.
• Polish State Archives and the State Archives in Bialystok.
• Read chapters excerpted from Jewish Roots in Poland on the Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation.
• Writing to Poland JewishGen InfoFile.
• The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research has the Book in the Holy Memory of the Bielsk-Podliask Jews which contains an English section (see link at the top of this page to read this section). The main body of the book is a few hundred pages in Hebrew or Yiddish with photos and a necrology.

Images of Bielsk Podlaski

• Click here to view images of Bielsk Podlaski.

Synagogues

• Photo of the interior of the wooden synagogue in Bielsk, circa 1920.
• Sketch of the central wooden synagogue in Bielsk.
• Photo of the exterior of the central wooden synagogue in a local museum.
• Photo of a synagogue in Bielsk Podlaski.
• Images of Polish Synagogues (none in Bielsk Podlaski).
• The Bialystok Great Synagogue.
• Wooden Synagogues of Poland in the 17th and 18th Century.
• Kristallnacht and Synagogue Desecration, photos of synagogues devastated by the Nazis, includes photos of the synagogues in Orla and Bialystok not far from Bielsk Podlaski. Part of A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust.

Cemeteries

• Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY and at Mt. Lebanon cemetery in Queens, NY have grounds purchased by the Bielsker Bruderlicher Untershtitzungs Verein (BBUV). Some members of the BBUV were buried on the burial society plots located in these cemeteries. Phone calls to the cemeteries may help you locate ancestors or relatives. The cemetery listing pages are from Jewish Cemeteries in the New York City Area.
• Click here for a listing of other Bielsk Podlaski Burial Societies in the New York Metro Area on the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York web site.
• Poland Jewish Cemetery Restoration Project.
• The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) is a database of names and other identifying information from cemeteries and burial records worldwide, from the earliest records to the present.
• Jewish Cemetery in Bielsk Podlaski

Maps

• Current map (148k).
• Map of region dated 1613 showing Bielsk.
• Hand drawn water color map (small file: 71k).
• Hand drawn water color map (larger file: 242k).
• Another hand drawn map.
• Photo of map board on street.
• MapQuest map showing Bielsk Podlaski (Latitude 52°76´, Longitude 23°20´).
• 1899 Grodno Gubernia Map from Notes on Gubernia District Maps.
• 1834 Grodno Gubernia Map on the JewishGen Belarus SIG.

History and Background Information

• History of Bielsk on the JewishGen Belarus SIG.
• Grodno Gubernia Cities and Towns, on the JewishGen Belarus SIG.
• Other Polish ShtetLinks sites on JewishGen.
• We Remember Jewish Bialystok, major city near Bielsk Podlaski.
• The Virtual Jewish History Tour - Poland.
• Jewish Communities of the World - Poland.
• The Polish Jews home page, created to preserve the memory of those millions of Polish Jews who suffered and perished..
• The Jews of Poland.
• Beyond the Pale - The Jews of Lithuania and Poland.
• The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, reviving a Jewish community in Poland.

Documents

• Letter from the last Rabbi in Bielsk testifying to the year of birth of a native of Bielsk.
• Beitar letter, dated March 28, 1935, explaining the documents and information required for immigration to Palestine.

Holocaust

• German Invasion of Poland, 1939.
• Lost Jewish Worlds - Grodno on the Yad Vashem web site mentions the movement of Jews from Bielsk Podlaski to Treblinka in a recounting of the German occupation.
• Deportations to Treblinka (on the Svisloch ShtetLinks page) refers to deportations of 11,000 Jews from the Bielsk Podlaski area to Treblinka in 1942.
• Liquidation of the Ghettos and the Deportations to the Camps (November 2, 1942—March 12, 1942), on Grodno Online
• Trials of German Major War Criminals contains a reference to executions in Bielsk, on the Nizkor Project web site.
• Judgment in the Cologne Court of Justice record of war crimes trial on Grodno Online, refers to 1942 Jewish population in Bielsk.
• Shtetl, on PBS Frontline, includes information about Treblinka where Jews from Bielsk Podlaski were murdered.
• We Remember Treblinka.
• Treblinka, on the Simon Wiesenthal Center Multimedia Learning Center.
• Treblinka, on the Jewish Virtual Library.
• Treblinka, on JewishGen.
• Testimonies of Treblinka SS-Men, on A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust.
• Treblinka, on The United States Holocaust Museum
• Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation (Swiss Banks) the official information web site for the Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation against Swiss Banks and other Swiss Entities.
• Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, established by Steven Spielberg to videotape and preserve the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. The foundation has collected more than 50,000 testimonies. Videos require the free QuickTime player.

Family Photos

View photos of families from Bielsk Podlaski.

Search JewishGen Databases

Search JewishGen. Search the JewishGen Family Finder for others researching Bielsk Podlaski. Also search the message archives for references to Bielsk Podlaski.

Books

• Jewish Bialystok and Surroundings In Eastern Poland by Tomasz Wisniewski. Two pages of this book are specific to the history of and present conditions in Bielsk Podlaski.
• History of the Jews in Poland and Russia by Simon Dubnow.

Other Links of Interest

• The Blumberg Family from Bielsk Podlaski

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Compiled by Andrew Blumberg Updated February 7, 2011 Copyright © 2002 - 2007 Andrew Blumberg

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