Translation of the Pinkas Hakehillot entry for Mielnica
Submitted by Eleanore Jeanne Andelman (z"l)
(Region: Borshchov, District:
Tarnopol)
Population
Year |
Overall
Population |
Jews |
1880 |
3,595 |
1,429 |
1900 |
3,582 |
1,200 |
1921 |
3,730 |
1,411 |
1931 |
(?) |
1,568 |
The Jewish
Settlement from its Inception to Word War II
The village was
under the proprietorship of the aristocracy until 1767, when Mielnica
received city status and biennial fair-days and a weekly market day
established there. It is located on the banks of the Dniester, and villagers
from both banks of the river came to the fairs that were held there.
Mielnica's development accelerated during the second half of the 19th
century. In 1863 the municipality numbered 546, and in the course of 15
years its population grew sevenfold. That same period witnessed the growth
of the potash industry for which Mielnica was famed throughout the district.
In the First World War the town was not harmed. In 1935 a fire broke out
which destroyed tens of houses.
The first Jews
were settled in Mielnica from the time it became a city. The Jewish
population grew rapidly during the second half of the 19th
century, but toward the end of the century the number of Jews declined
steadily as a result of Mielnica's residents emigrating to larger
communities and to lands across the sea. During the period between the two
World Wars, the Jewish population steadily grew.
Mielnica's Jews
derived their principal livelihood from small business and from trades.
Individuals carried on wholesale commerce in grain, cow, leather, and eggs.
To aid Jewish merchants and trades people, the Joint Distribution Committee
set up two financial institutions in Mielnica: a charity fund (1928) and a
credit bank (1929). In 1935 some ten Jewish houses, several shops, a granary
and a bakery went up in flames during the aforementioned fire. A collection
was organized, whose funds were disbursed among victims of the fire without
regard to religion or nationality. During the thirties, many Jewish
merchants and trades people in Mielnica became impoverished and were unable
to compete with the Ukrainian and Polish cooperatives which were set up
there. As a result of a government ban on kosher slaughter, several Jewish
butcher shops closed down in 1937, leaving their owners with no means of
support.
An independent
community was organized in the forties of the 19th century. In
1843 Rabbi Yehiel Meir Michael ben Moshe Bromer was appointed local rabbi,
and served until 1883, when he assumed the post of chief rabbi of Buczacz.
In 1895 Rabbi Meshullam ben Shim'on Roth, author of Kol M'vaser, was
elected rabbi of Mielnica. In 1899 he moved to Horostkov to serve there,
moving again to Czernowitz in 1936 and emigrating to the Land of
Israel in 1940. From 1908 to the First World War, Rabbi Uzziel Meir ben
Shmuel HaKohen Rapoport served as rabbi of Mielnica. Between the two World
Wars the rabbis were Rapoport and Weiss.
Zionist groups
existed in Mielnica at the beginning of the 20th century, though
an active Zionist presence was already visible at the end of World War I. At
that time branches of Poalei Zion, Hitachdut, General Zionists, Mizrachi,
and the Revisionists were set up. In addition, youth organizations such as
Yugend, Zionist Youth, and Gordonia were active, and in 1923 a branch of
Ezra was set up.
In the
elections for the Zionist Congress of 1935, the General Zionists received
125 votes, Mizrachi received 50, the Labor League for the Land of Israel
received 256, and the State Party received 141.
In the 1922
election, 650 Mielnica Jews voted for the Nation Zionist Party.
From 1928 the
Zionists held a majority in the Jewish community. A Mizrachi person was
elected chairman. In the city council, which was elected in 1934, the Jews
received 5 out of 16 mandates, among which were 2 Haredim (right-wing
Orthodox), 1 General Zionist, and 2 representatives of Hitachdut.
After World War
I, the Jewish Community Center was established in Mielnica. The local
Hitachdut branch set up a public library. In 1920, a supplementary Hebrew
school was opened with 3 teachers. For a period of time Yiddish courses were
given at the Yugend branch.
The Second
World War
With the Red
Army's entry into Mielnica during the second half of September 1939, the
large farms were nationalized. Homes, large stores and warehouses owned by
Jews were confiscated and private workshops were banned. The community's
institutions, political parties, and youth organizations were broken up, and
a number of rich persons and community workers were arrested. A few people
succeeded in escaping while there was still time, while others were arrested
with their families and expelled to remote regions of the Soviet Union. A
local public school was established whose language of instruction was
Yiddish.
When war
between Germany and the Soviet Union broke out, military conscripts
retreated together with Soviet authorities as did a few Jews who were known
Communists. The Russians did not try to persuade Jews to leave the city.
Practical possibilities for evacuation were closed off; roads were sealed by
the army and were bombed by the Germans. Up until the Soviet authorities and
army departed, a hostile atmosphere toward Jews prevailed. Ukrainian nations
organized their own militia, spread anti-Semitic slogans, and cited the
Christian people to reprisal, plunder and rioting. On the pretext that the
Jews had collaborated with the Soviet police in the murder of Ukrainians,
Jews were ordered to exhume the bodies of 12 prisoners who had been shot by
the Soviets in the prison yard. To prevent harm to members of the community,
Jewish youths gathered at the Community Center and organized themselves into
night patrols. Jews were afraid to go out into the street. From all over the
surrounding area, and even from Bukovina across the Dniester, wagonloads of
Ukrainian farmers streamed into town to plunder the property of Jews. Armed
with axes, the farmers and the urban mob broke into Jewish homes and shops
and destroyed a pharmacy. Only the intervention of the Greek Catholic
priest, a group of Baptists, and some decent Ukrainians in Mielnica kept the
looting from becoming pogrom. Especially great bloodshed took place in the
village of Volkovca. Bodies of murder victims floating on the Dniester were
retrieved by the Jews of Mielnica and buried in the cemetery.
After several
days of general anarchy, on July 8, 1941, the Hungarians entered Mielnica
and established a large military presence in the city. Officers took up
residence in Jewish homes, treating Jews with a decency comparable to that
shown Christians, and often sharing food with their hosts. The Hungarian
command imposed order and put an end to killing, looting, and housebreaking.
The farmers who had come into Mielnica from the surrounding area were
dispersed. In exchange for this, the Hungarians demanded that the Jews
supply them with food and goods, and coerced them to serve and work for the
army. The following representatives of the Jewish council which had been
organized in those days maintained contact with the Hungarians: David Mancer,
Leibush Schwarcz, Rabbi Donner, Ch. Feuerstein, Richter the pharmacist, and
Moshe Kopler.
Suddenly, after
two weeks of calm, the Hungarians arrested and incarcerated a number of
Jewish men and women on the eve of July 17, 1941. This arrest was carried
out following denunciation by the Ukrainians, who brought the Hungarians a
list of alleged Communists in town - 146 Jews and 4 Ukrainians. The
prisoners were treated very rudely but were released after a short time,
evidently through the intervention of the Jewish delegation with the
Hungarian commander.
The Hungarians
brought to Mielnica several truckloads of Jewish refugees from Carpatoros.
These refugees were starved and weak, shoeless and threadbare, and had been
robbed and beaten on the way by the Ukrainians. The Jews of the town aided
the refugees as much as their means allowed, inviting them into their homes,
feeding them, and collecting clothing for them.
When authority
passed directly to the Germans in August 1941, a Jewish council was
established in Mielnica. It included respected members of the community and
public figures who had been active during the days of the Hungarians. Among
the other members of the delegation mentioned above, we know the names Itche
Fischler, S. L. Scharfstein, Munyu Roth, Izio Reich, Nathan Sohnenklahr, and
Joseph Kesselblat.
Under Hungarian
rule the situation of the Jews of Mielnica became severe. They were
forbidden to stroll in the city's center, and the men were forced into hard
labor: unloading and loading, paving and repair of roads, breaking of stones
for paving, work on surround estates which had been taken over by the
Germans. In addition, a derogatory star-of-David ribbon was instituted
(though even under the Hungarians it had not been uncommon to mark Jews with
a yellow star sewn to the clothing). The Jews were left with no means of
livelihood, the poor among them being hired out as workers on Ukrainian
farms. This contact enabled them to purchase needs whose official sale to
Jews was banned.
Along with its
responsibility of regularly supplying the Germans with manpower, the Jewish
council was required to give them money, jewelry, merchandise and furniture,
clothing and shoes, and surplus food items on a permanent basis. German
border guards were billeted in the Zilberbusch home, and the Jewish council
was forced to equip the building with furniture and appliances, which it
procured from wealthy Jews or bought from Christians. The German border
guards enjoyed getting drunk, rioting through the town and harassing Jews
whom they happened to encounter in the streets. They broke into houses at
night and raped young girls. Many Jews never undressed for the night or
simply slept out of their houses until dawn. Gestapo men from Czortkov would
often fan out over Mielnica, demanding money and merchandise in exchange for
false promises to protect Jews from new edicts. The Jewish poulace
complained to the Jewish council because it had no power to prevent such
abuses. A severe night attack occurred in December 1941: the Germans broke
into many Jewish homes, even that of Rabbi Donner, abusing the rabbi and
degrading his wife. Several Jewish homes were set afire and some Jews were
murdered. Next day, when Rabbi Donner and Moshe Kopler came to complain to
the commander of the border patrol in the name of the Jewish council, the
rabbi was beaten and thrown down the stairs. After this incident, Moshe
Kopler served as council chairman.
At about that
time, in the winter of 1941-42, the Jewish council was commanded to collect
from the Jews all fur products, gold and silver objects, and other articles
of value.
Impressments of
young Jewish men to the labor camps at Varkivialka and Stopki began in
November 1941. The first time, the Germans demanded of the Jewish council
that they bring 40 men to the gathering point in Czortkov. The Jewish
council selected men whose families had at least two sons or two wage
earners. Those were to go were given warm clothing.
Some time
later, however, when the Germans demanded 70 men, no one came forward
because the terrible conditions at the labor camps had become known. This
time the German and Ukrainian police launched a manhunt in the houses and
streets. The third dispatch of people to the labor camps included 50 women
who had until then worked at the neighboring tobacco plantations. They were
abducted and transported by the Germans to an unknown work site.
A small number
of Mielnica Jews succeeded in escaping from the town and hiding in forests
or familiar farmhouses. Most of them were killed as a result of denunciation
by the Ukrainian residents, or were discovered by the police. Some local
Jews and some who were refugees from Hungary attempted to cross the border
into Bukovina with the aid of Ukrainian smugglers in exchange for large sums
of money, and from there to Czernowitz. Most of the escapees, however, were
caught there by the police, brought back to the border point at Sniatin, and
handed over to the Germans, who murdered them on the spot.
Despite the
decline in population because of deportation to the labor camps and because
of flight, the number of Jews in Mielnica not only did not decrease; it
actually increased during the period of the German conquest to about 2,500.
This was because of the flow of refugees from Hungary, mentioned above, and
later because of the flow of refugees and displaced persons from the
surrounding villages. The last group of exiles was concentrated in Mielnica
on September 25, 1942. Next day, on September 26, 1942, the first day of
Sukkot in the year 5703, a liquidation action took place in the town,
conducted by Gestapo men from Khorostkov. German and Ukrainian police
surrounded the town and began shooting. People were abducted from the houses
in the streets, brought to the marketplace, and made to sit with their hands
on their necks. During the action the sick, the weak, the handicapped, and
those who had hidden out were summarily murdered. The police also shot those
who attempted to escape. Some 100 to 300 persons were killed. The Ukrainian
rabble looked at the murders and aided in the hunt for those in hiding.
Those who were concentrated in the marketplace were brought to the railroad
station in the village of Ivania-Pusta, 4 kilometers from the town. Some
wagons transported those who could not walk fast. From this station they
departed for the annihilation camp at Belz. The number of exiles, local
Jews, and displaced persons is estimated variously as 1,200, 1,400 or 2,000.
After the action several hundred Jews were left in the town. Some were not
discovered in hiding, and some were permitted by Germans to remain. Among
the latter were members of the Jewish council, the Jewish police, and the
burial society. During the action the Germans did not respect any work
cards, and those who held such cards were sent to their deaths.
The next day,
or perhaps some days after the action, the German authorities let it be
known that in two weeks (until October 22, 1942 according to another
account) Mielnica was obligated to be Judenrein [clean of Jews] and
that its remaining Jews were to move to the ghetto at Borshchov. The Jews
loaded their remaining possessions on wagons and relocated to that ghetto.
Before they left they hid several Torah scrolls under the floor of the great
synagogue, Torah scrolls that they had until then managed to save from
destruction. They took some Torah scrolls with them to Borshchov, where the
fate of Mielnica's displaced Jews overtook them.
After the
Soviet army liberated Mielnica on April 6, 1944, 28 of the town's pre-war
Jewish residents unexpectedly came out of hiding. They had passed the war in
nearby forests, in villages, or in farmers' homes. Some Jews had been saved
by the generosity of a righteous gentile, the Ukrainian IIya Lopatnuk. Some
hundred Jewish residents of Mielnica fought the war on the side of the
Soviet Union, thanks to their conscription into the Red Army during the
period of Soviet rule (1939-41). The Jews who gathered in Mielnica after the
war moved quickly to larger cities out of fear of hostile activities by
Ukrainian nationals. Most of them emigrated to the Land of Israel or the
United States.
[Translated from Pinkas
Hakehillot - Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities, Poland, Vol. II: Eastern
Galicia. Published by Yad Vashem, Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance
Authority, Jerusalem, 1980. Spellings are, for the most part, phonetic.]
This page is hosted at no cost to the public by JewishGen, Inc., a non-profit corporation. If you feel there is a benefit to you in accessing this site, your
JewishGen-erosity is appreciated.
Last updated
04/17/11 by ELR
Copyright © 2011 SRRG