HISTORY

1993 town population: 1,800 with no Jews. This small town in Scucyn region, 22 km SE of Scucyn, 7 km from the railway station at Skribovtsy and on the banks of the river, Zoludchanka, named for the many oak trees that flourished on its banks and dropped their fruit. These acorns are called "zholod" in Russian. In the days of the Polish Kings, they privately owned Zholudok; and the town was a provincial capital, a "Starosta" settlement. King Casimir Yagilonchik (Jagiello) built the Cathedral in 1480. The Cathedral burnt down in 1506 during the Tartar Invasion and was rebuilt in 1529 by King Zigismunt (Sigismunt) I. In 1535, two Russian nobles fled from Moscow to Poland and the anger Czar Ivan the Terrible: Simon Beilski and Ivan Latzki. Zigismund the Elder, whose patronage they sought, granted them land. Ivan Latzki received Zholudok. Eventually, the town passed to the ownership of the Sapiah family, and later to the Rodziman-Franzkeievich family. In 1682, Kazimir and Alexandra Frantskevich established a Catholic church. In February 1706, Swedish King Karl XII had an estate in Zheludok. At the beginning of the 18th century, Zholudok passed to the ownership of the Tinzhaus (Tinzhoys) family, one of whom was the archeologist -scientist K. Tezengauz, born in Zheludok in 1786 and buried in the Catholic churchyard . From the Tinzhauses, it passed at the 1795 Partition of Poland to the Russian Oruski family. Its population was then 650 tax paying souls, of whom 287 households were Jewish. It was a volostj center in Lida povet, Vilna guberniya. In the eighteenth century, a hospital and a school existed. In 1848, on the Zoludchanka River near the right bank of the Neman River in Lida uezd on the road from Grodno to Novogrodek, 10 viorsts from the post office in the town of Peshchulna and 42 viorsts SW of Lida and 130 viorsts from Vilna had 130 houses and 674 residents. A Jewish synagogue, a Jewish house of prayer, two water powered flour mills, a whiskey distillery, a beer brewery, twenty-three stores, a weekly Sunday market, and an annual fair on the feast day of the Holy Ghost (Pentecost Sunday, seven weeks after Easter) were part of the town. The 1849 Jewish population was 247 and in 1898, 1,372 out of a total population of 1,860. In 1897 the population was 1,860 in the town with a technical college, a Catholic cathedral, three synagogues, two mills, a leather workshop, a beer production factory, more than twenty shops, and ten taverns and Sunday markets.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the 1,969 residents lived in the town belonging to Svyatopolk-Chetvertinski uezd. In 1903 the rabbi was Eliahu Moshe Levin, who died, then Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz. Zaludok is the birthplace of Ben Avidor (Abraham Leib Shalkovich (1867-1921). In 1915, Germany occupied it. In 1919-1920, the Polish Army occupied it. Beginning 1921, Zaludok belonged to Poland as a miasteczko (small town) and gmina wiejska (parish village and center), seat of the council office, in second uchastok, Lida powiat, Novogrudok voevodstvo. The Justice of the Peace was in Lida and the Justice Court in Wilno. The 1928 population was 552. The railroad was eleven kilometers away in Skrzybowce. The Justice of the Peace was in Lida and the Justice Court in Wilno with the railway in 11 kilometers away in Skrzybowce. The post office, telephone, and telegraph were in Zholodek as were one Catholic church, a hospital, distilleries, tanneries and mills. In September 1939, the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic took control. Beginning January 15, 1940, Zaludok was designated as a small town and a district center. During World War II, it was occupied by German troops and destroyed. The Red Army liberated Zaludok on July 12, 1944. Since April 17 1962, Zaludok belonged to Scucyn district. In 1971, with a population of 2,100, Zaludok had a bakery, a shoe factory called "Neman", a post office, a secondary school, a kindergarten, a medical profession training college, a cinema, a House of Culture, and a hospital. One km to the west is an architectural monument, a residential palace, dating back to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An archeological monument of the "Selische" settlement may be found on the bank of the river Zhaludyanka.

There is a grave of partisans who were killed during World War II.

Of particular Jewish interest: About 280 Jewish families lived in Zaludok beginning in the first half of the nineteenth century. By 1800, the Jewish population was 1,370 out of 1,900. The town contained a synagogue, a prayer house, a cheder and Talmud Torah. Rabbis of the town included Rabbi Chaim Rutenberg-Mischkovsky, Zadik, who officiated from 1865 to 1880. He was the presiding judge. Gaon rabbi Eliahu Moshe Levin (who edited "Yad Eliahu: Question and Answers in Halacha") succeeded. In 1903, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz became rabbi. He left to become the Rabbi of Moscow. From 1913 to 1933, Rabbi Zvi Arieh Lurie was Zaludok's rabbi. His son-in-law, Rabbi Elkhanon Sorotzkin (ben Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin) was the last rabbi of Zaludok. The Soviets imprisoned him and exiled him to Siberia. He emigrated to Israel following WWII. In 1920 a Hebrew School opened in Zaludok that became part of the Tarbut system in 1930. The school's Zionist curriculum included Hebrew and Judaism as subjects. A Yiddish Central Jewish School Organization (Z.I.S.O) organized about 1930. The Jewish community maintained these schools because the Polish government did not support separate religious schools for Jews. The Soviets abolished these schools in 1939. Hehalutz and Hehalutz Hazair were active in Zaludok beginning in 1922 and 1925 respectively. Haliga Lemaan Eretz Israel Haovedet collected for Keren Kayement and Keren Hayessod. Commercially, Zaludok Jewish residents were merchants, shop-keepers, and craftsman. Their grain trade, purchased from local peasants, was shipped to Germany. Becoming part of the National Railway Network in 1930, Zaludok shipped grain by train. An unstable economy in Zaludok resulted from repeated border changes. Rabbi Shmuel Levin directed the Jewish People's Bank. Ben Avigdor [Abraham Leib Shelkovitz], a writer, and Pinchas Kremien were from Zaludok. Kremien was a painter of the Paris School of Art and member of the Academy of Arts in France. In 1939, the Jewish population total was about 2,200 or 90% of the population. The German army occupied Zaludok on 27 June 1941. They set fire to the town, destroying almost every Jewish home. The Jews wore yellow stars and paid ransoms. In July 1941, twenty-two young Jewish males were killed for not wearing the star. On 1 November, 1941, the Jews of Zaludok were rounded up from the ghetto on Orlowa Street, the only street surviving the June fire. About 300 Jews from nearby Orlova, where Jews lived since the beginning of the eighteenth century, also were taken to Orlowa Street. In the winter of
1941/42, Polish policemen helped the Germans murder Jews of both towns. One day, it was thirty-two Jews from Orlova. On another day, twenty-eight Jews of Zaludok were killed. About 1 May 1942, 140 young Jews were sent to the labor camp Skribowo and later to the Lida Ghetto. A few managed to escape and join Russian partisan groups including that of Tuviah Bielski. Shlomo Shifmanowitz of Zaludok specifically is mentioned in Soviet dispatches. About thirty of these men survived including Baruch Levin, nominated as "Hero of the Soviet Union" before his emigration to Israel. Finally, on the morning of 8 May 1942, German soldiers and Ukrainian and Police policemen surrounded the ghetto, driving the Jews from their homes to the market place for a "selection" by two SS officers: Leopold Windisch and Rudolf Werner. (These two were sentenced to life imprisonment following the war.) Eighty-one craftsmen were selected and sent to the synagogue, then transferred to the
Scucyn Ghetto. The remaining people, more than 1,500, were killed and buried in a mass grave. Polish policemen caught and killed those in hiding. The remaining craftsmen from the selection went from the Scucyn Ghetto in September 1943 to an extermination camp. Holocaust memorial photo

Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego (1880-1902), XIV, pp. 827-828: "Żołudek".:

ZALUDOK PICTURES