MELITOPOL: Zaporizhia Oblast[

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Official seal of Melitopol Alternate names:  Russian: Мелитополь. Ukrainian: Мелітополь. Greek: Μελιτόπολις. Yiddish: מעליטאָפּאָל.. 46°50' N, 35°22' E, 132 miles E of Kherson, 113 miles S of Dnipropetrovsk (Ekaterinoslav) on the MolochnaRiver that flows through the eastern edge of the city and into the Molochnyi Liman, which eventually joins the Sea of Azov. 1900 Jewish population: 6,563.

Russian source with photos: Territory by Jews paralleled with its population of all. Part arriving focused on cooperation with the authorities and landowners - merchants take contracts for supplying the army, setting up and maintenance of postal stations and crossings, road construction. They were accompanied by assistants, saddlers, blacksmiths and other attendants, small traders. Owners of large estates was invited for the role of Jews estate managers, organizers, marketing and processing of agricultural products, etc. In the county in 1831 were even specially organized two "possessory town" - Vasilyevo (then Vasilevka) and the Annunciation. In this Vasilevka building for Jewish prayer school was built landowner Popov at their own expense, and the Jewish community and then bought it in installments. petty traders, artisans and craftsmen and owners of mills, oil mills, etc., serving requests quickly growing urban and rural county. They came mostly from the northern regions of Ukraine, partially - from Volhynia and Bessarabia, partly even from abroad. In parallel, the government organized a neighborhood - in Kherson and Ekaterinoslav provinces - Jewish agricultural colonies, where a significant number came Jews from Belarus and the Baltic. Many of them, and especially - of their descendants then stopped work on the ground and joined the Jewish population and Melitopol district. The city and county also settled demobilized families for various reasons, and even in the armed forces of Jewish soldiers. multiethnic character of the edge has led to that in addition to Melitopol Jewish community were quite large German, Karaite and Armenian communities, representatives of the latter several times elected to the municipal leadership. Perhaps it affected that ethnic tensions in Melitopol were largely weakened. Total number of Jews in 1838, still in the settlement was 128 people - 3% of the total population. Later it grew rapidly both in absolute and relative terms. An important factor was the Crimean War, railway construction, start of the mass of grain exports, the pogroms in 1881 in the regions and expulsion of the Jews from the villages of the law in 1882 because of the circumstances of the last two Jewish population between 1881 and Melitopol year 1886 increased from 1387 to 3093 people (from 13.7 to 22.6%), and by 1897 had reached 6503 people (~ 42.4%).Jewish merchants and contractors have played a significant role in the economy of the city, and before the publication of discriminatory regulations quite a lot of them was in local government - city council. At this time in Russia in general and in particular in Melitopol was actively "first industrialization." There were plants, including with the participation of Jewish capital. In Melitopol there were factories and agricultural engineering Lieberman Korshunova, and later Zafermana (one - Israel Davidovich, a little later - the other, his brother Abram), numerous shops (Gorelik, Lekker, splashing, Goldenberg et al.) Arose and "pockets of progress": Publishing (Lieberman, Lifshitz, Lempert), shop (Zinkovska, Kivatitskogo, Lioznova), bookstores (Rosenstein, Lesman, Lifshitz Bakhrakh) ... The first synagogue was built in Melitopol in the 1850s years, became the first official rabbi came from Grodno Hirsch Itskovich Lubich. After his three-year cadence followed by some uncertainty, then the Jews of the city and county joined rabbinate of Berdyansk, Melitopol and Berdyansk acquires assistant rabbi Berko Abramovich Rogalski, who comes from a prominent merchant family Theodosia. In 1881, Melitopol had already own treasury ("public") rabbi - it was Eden Life Khatskelevich Mochan. spiritual rabbi of pre-World War was Mordecai Haimovich Rabinovich. In addition to the synagogue in the city were built house of prayer "Beth Jacob "and Handicraft (" Second ") prayer house. This was not enough, and before the period of autumn holidays in the province flew requests to resolve collective praying in private Jewish or specially hired houses. Permission is usually issued, but not all. Jewish education system included, as usual, and cheders Talmud Torah. Generally, Jews Melitopol were largely assimilated, along with Yiddish widely used Russian language and education sought to make it in Russian. Jewish youth actively participated in public life and adjoined tend to progressive all-Russian parties. Melitopol main Jewish organizations are the property of the community and the aforementioned OPBEM. Community-led, usually merchants - succeeded each other, in particular, Abraham Khotinsk Benjamin Toperverh Gregory Lieberman. In 1902-1917 years. community was headed engineer VB Bohuslav, co-owner of the brewery. OPBEM was established in 1898, and the most famous head of the organization was a pharmacist Gregory M. Reich. The system operated OPBEM Jewish cheap dining, the largest in the county library, hospice. To OPBEM adjoined Jewish Hospital. Jewish population Melitopol continued to decline until about 1910, when it amounted to 3610 people. The main reason was a sharp intensification of anti-Semitism in the country, and to activate the "Union of the Russian People", rampant reaction after the suppression of the 1905 revolution. In Melitopol first occurred in Russia during this revolution pogrom. It cost fortunately no deaths - played the role of an active opposition and the thugs of the local authorities, and actions of self-defense, both organized and spontaneous. It teamed mostly Jewish youth, but was a significant part of non-Jews, mostly supporters of the RSDLP. By 1912 Jews in Melitopol again became more - the number exceeded 5000, and it was approximately 23% of the total population. Affected and the new commercial crisis, due to which many traders in the villages have lost their jobs, and a new campaign of expulsion from villages and decline in emigration Harbin because there plague outbreak. During World War I tsarist government came at the peak of his anti-Semitic policy. This strangely combined with the fact that on the first Melitopol conscription went 96 Russian and 146 Jews, ID Zaferman switched his plant for the production of shells and mines, and shoe factory Volyn - for sewing boots for the army. But the failure of the front had to be someone to blame - and the mass expulsion of Jews from the frontline provinces. Melitopol these deportees took more than 3,000 people, and another added "simple refugees." As a result, the Jewish community of the city increased by more than twice the care of resettlement, nutrition, employment, new settlers became the main occupation of its asset. In such circumstances, the city met the February and October revolutions and civil war. As already mentioned, the Jewish Bolsheviks in almost was not. However, the alignment of forces in the Civil War was that the main path of the Jewish youth was in the Red Army. Few major bourgeois able to emigrate to the West, some Jews, especially among arrivals from Poland, Belarus and the Baltic States, have taken the path of the Zionist emigration. In particular, Melitopol is considered one of the centers of origin of movement Gehaluts. Others waited for the fate of the military, and many long cast their lot with the army. During the Civil War the Jews continued to flock to the city - in villages and colonies they were looting and violence. As a result, when the end of 1920 the town was liberated from Wrangel in Melitopol was 55.6% of the Jews - despite experienced in early 1920 typhus epidemic. The authorities have taken "unloading" of the city, trying to send more refugees to the places of their former residence. Simultaneously, under the policy of War Communism, they performed all-out withdrawal of grain from the peasants, bringing extremely rich bread Tavria to famine in 1921-1922. Only a transition to NEP stopped orgy deaths.As a result, "unloading" hunger and the number of Jews in the town fell from 13,180 in 1921 to about 7,300 in 1923, then it increased slightly due to the outflow of Jews from villages and until 1941 remained at the level of 8000. City, meanwhile, grew up, and in addition joins the suburbs, that the proportion of Jews continuously decreased. With the introduction of the registry offices was eliminated Institute official rabbi and soon banned teaching Melamed. Talmud Torah transformed into a Jewish labor school, but she soon died out, unable to compete with the huge increase in Russian-language education network, several burdened Ukrainisation. Mass of small traders and artisans during the NEP became the object of social transformation: artisans tried to unite the gang, and then in the course of industrialization partially converted into a factory proletariat, traders adjusted to declassing and pushed on farming. In particular, the city was organized selhozarteli "Goropashnik", which then assisted Agro-Joint relocated to Saki, Crimea. Other Jewish selhozposelenie was established in the area Chongaro near Genichesk. In Melitopol OZET opened a local branch, which took the resettlement of Jews "on the ground", and later in Birobidzhan. Towards the end of the 1920s in the city "at the request of workers' closed synagogue (and when and how to shut down the other houses of worship, still failed to find). The latest legal (of course, spiritual) Melitopol rabbis were Mordechai Krol and then - Gersh Veniaminovich Makovsky. "petty-bourgeois" pockets of Jewish culture, in particular, the society "Maccabi" were closed in the early 1920s, but those who stood on communist positions preserved up to the war in 1941, but because of the mass of waste hirel youth from using Yiddish.Schools, Pioneer and Komsomol organizations established in the Palace of Pioneers, children's railway massively involved Jewish youth and raised it in the spirit of internationalism and the struggle for a brighter future. However, in the same pre-war years laid bare the hypocrisy of the ruling elite of the country and its inconsistency with the proclaimed ideals. In particular, the notorious mass repressions affected not only the ideological enemies of the Soviet regime, but sincere and his followers allow themselves to "deviations" or simply maligned. In different parts of the Soviet Union, then the lives of many Jews Melitopol-communists, such as A. Abramsky, ADBendelston, JS Vengerov, IA Wisniewski and others. Consistently and without any sense were destroyed almost all the Jews returned at the call of the Soviet government of Harbin. The total number of repressed melitopoltsev Jews amounts to several hundred people. Nazis occupied Melitopol in early October 1941. Industrial enterprises in the city were evacuated. Remaining for various reasons in the Jews were in a short time to destroy the invaders in a ditch near the village of Voznesenka. List of names of the dead by now counts more than 530 people and is far from complete. Unfortunately, the documents were intact and alive witnesses did not make it. We can assume that in Melitopol died then to 3,000 Jews. It is possible that in the same ditch and found death svezennyh victims from other places.Melitopol remaining Jews, except the elderly, children and very very weak, went to the front, or worked in the rear. Among the soldiers are, for example, the names of tankers - Hero of the Soviet Union, MP Kravets, generals LY Rabinovitch and MJPronshteyna - and many others. Only one list of those killed at the front of Jewish melitopoltsev too far from complete, now contains about 630 names. enormous role played by Jews in the postwar reconstruction and development of the city. Suffice it to mention the names of such business leaders as LI Bobrov, IS Gerasun, GM and MM Zilberglity, II Usherovich, LM Heifetz, LG Shenkman, etc. However, very soon Melitopol as general Soviet Jews have experienced successor to the declared internationalism "special national policy" that began with the shooting of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, to continue the struggle against cosmopolitanism, and then - with the "doctors pests." In 1993 was founded Melitopolske separation of the Jewish Council of Ukraine, which later in 1997 was transformed into the Melitopol city Jewish community (MGEO), which is a member of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress and a member of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine and the Vaad of Ukraine. In 1998, returned to the community complex of historic buildings, which today houses the Hesed, community center "Or Hadash", Israeli Cultural Center and the Jewish Agency. S.V.Volovnik, V.N.Kumok, [Mar 2014] j-roots.info. Detailed description of the photos. Video interview in Melitopol, Dnepropetrovsk ICC, 2011. [Mar 2014]

Cemetery photo. [Mar 2014]

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Parent Category: EASTERN EUROPE