shtetlinks

Shtetl: Kovel, Ukraine

Other alternate names: Kowel [Polish], Kavele, Kovl [Yiddish], Kovli

Latitude 51°13´, Longitude 24°42´

"They would hear the foreign tongue on market day, when the farmers from the nearby villages would gather, blocking the streets of the city with their carts loaded with wood and merchandise. The Jewish peddlers and the housewives would walk between the wagons, inspecting the chickens and scouting out goods, handling everything as if they'd already bought it. The farmers leave their womenfolk sitting in the wagons and go off to wander through the marketplace and stopping to peddle their wares in the stores." From the "The Character of Kovel"

Background Information

History (Updated 14 March 2015))

The village Kavele, as it was even called in later times by Yiddish speakers, was known since the beginning of the 14th century as a crossroads on the way from Lithuania to Ruthenia, the lands populated by eastern Slavic peoples. Kovel obtained its status as a city in 1518. It was in the district of Volhynia, then part of the Duchy of Lithuania which was establishing itself as a dominant power among the principalities that had been part of the Kievan Rus' dynasty. During the next century, the Jewish community fared reasonably well as far as their rights and economic influence. But tensions from economic competition, anti-Semitism and crusades against heretics led to worsening conditions in the 1600s with complaints by Kovel burghers to the king and, in 1648, the Cossack-led Chmielnicki massacres. The late 19th and 20th century saw the growth of a vibrant Jewish community - economically, politically and intellectually - but the rapid succession of World War I, the Bolshevik-Polish war and becoming part of a reconstituted Poland, with its waves of virulent anti-Semitism, had devastating effects. The Soviet occupation in 1939 effectively ended Jewish community life, and the occupation by the Nazis which quickly followed, wiped out the Jews of Kovel. The anguish of many of those who lost their lives was recorded in nearly 100 pencil-written notes on the walls of the city's Great Synagogues, lamenting the dead, asking remembrance and calling for vengeance on the Germans. (Click Here for more.)
Bibliography
The Last Notes of Those Who Died Written on the Walls of the Great Synagogue

Maps

Pictures

Historical Photos of Kovel - Album One
Historical Photos of Kovel - Album Two (Updated 14 August 2009)
Historical Photos of Kovel from the Kovel Yizkor Book (1957) - Album Three (Updated 16 February 2009, three photos added)
Historical Photos of Kovel from the Pinkes Kovel (1951) - Album Four (Updated 18 November 2010)
Historical Photos of Kovel - Album Five
Contemporary Photos of Kovel - Album Six (Updated 20 October 2012)

Kovel Links

English Translation of the Kovel Yizkor Book (Completed June 2020)
Kovel Yizkor Book in Hebrew
Table of Contents for the 1951 Edition of the Pinkes Kovel (added 30 December 2010)
Name Index of Individuals from Kovel (updated 18 August 2013) This is an index of names, and the sources in which they were found, for individuals mentioned on this site. This latest update reflects names culled from new translations of the Kovel Yizkor book.
List of Deceased from Memorial Book for former residents of Kowel (Published in Buenos Aires, 1951)
Collection of Oral Histories and Memoirs by Those Who Lived in Kovel (updated 28 April 2011)
The Cemetery at Kovel (Updated 18 November 2012)
The destroyed or built-over cemeteries of Kovel from the ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (Updated 16 December 2018)
Kovel Guidebook from Project "Shtetl Routes. Vestiges of Jewish cultural heritage in cross-border tourism" (Updated 26 January 2019)
Wikipedia Kovel site
The Israeli Organization of The Jews of Kovel and Its Surroundings Mostly in Hebrew.
1929 Business Directory for Kowel Page One Page Two Page Three Page Four (Updated 1 October 2010)
JewishGen's Ukraine SIG
A General History of Jews in the Ukraine from the 4th Century B.C. to the 1930s

Memoirs and Family Stories

The Story of the Kimmel Family (Updated 25 June 2017)

My Kimmel ancestors started with Simcha Benjamin (Bunim) Kimmel. He was born sometime before 1829 in Russia (and died around 1900) and had two sons, Itzhak David Kimmel and Beryl Wolf. Both immigrated to New York, Itzhak David in 1901 when he was 36 while brother Beryl Wolf, about 54, followed in May, 1906. The lines of the family tracing to David and Beryl both lived in Brooklyn - in the same 71 square miles - but as years passed, they became unaware the other existed. I did not learn that until 2006 when I connected through JewishGen with fellow researcher Dov Rubin, Beryl's grandson, who was able to make the connection when he asked about a blurry photo he had found that turned out to be my great-grandfather. (Click Here for more.)
Descendant Chart of the Kimmel family (Updated 12 Aug 2017)
Descendant Chart of the Turkenitz (Turkenitch)/Kimmel/Stern Families
Descendant Chart of the Zlotnick family

Searchable Databases

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of Shoah Victims' Names for Kovel.

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