Alternate names: Bila Tserkva, Бiла Церква [Ukr]; Belaya Tserkov, Белая Церковь, literally White Church [Rus]; BELAYA TSERKOV and Shwartz Timme [Yiddish]; Bila Zerkwa [Ger]; Biała Cerkiew [Pol]; Sde Lavan [Heb]; Belaja Zerkow, Belaia Tserkov, Biala Tserkov. 49°47' N, 30°07' E, 48 miles SSW of Kyyiv (Kiev). 1900 Jewish population: 19,000. JewishGen Ukraine SIG. This city located on the Ros' River in the Kiev Oblast in central Ukraine. Population 203,300 (2004 est.) The administrative center of the Bilotserkivskyi Raion as a city oblast . The town was founded in 1032. After 1363, Bila Tserkva belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until 1569 when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became sovereign. Granted Magdeburg Rights in 1620 by Sigismund III Vasa, a peace treaty between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Ukrainian Cossack rebels under Bohdan Khmelnytsky was signed in 1651. After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, Bila Tserkva was subject to Imperial Russia and was a significant market place in the 19th century. Until the 1930s, a significant Jewish community lived here although some left due to Cossacks, Tzarist policies, and Stalinist purges. Most were destroyed during the Holocaust. Shmuel Yerushalmi, Israeli protest poet, and David Bronstein, chess grandmaster and writer, lived here. photo. [August 2009]
Jewish Community of Belaya Tserkov, Gogola 8, Belaya Tserkov, 09117 Ukraine. 380-4463-531-45 and FAX 380-4463-998-01.news articles. [August 2009]
CEMETERY: In 2003, vandals damaged property on the site of a Jewish cemetery used from 1717-1932 that currently houses the ohel over the grave of a Chernobyl Rebbe and broke the sign indicating a Jewish Cemetery. [August 2009]