Jewish Families from Żołynia, Ukraine

This project seeks to collect all of the Jewish families from the town of Żołynia, Ukraine, also known as Zhalin, Zhelin, Zholynia, Zholinia, Zolin, Zolinia, Żołynia Miasteczko, Wies Żołynia.

Gesher Galicia - Żołynia

Zolynia

Religious Zolynia

Overview

The Collapse of Austria-Hungary

By the end of September 1918, the German, Austrian and Turkish Empires were militarily and economically exhausted, crippled by food shortages and the approaching Allied armies. Poles, Serbs and Czechs were just some of the nationalities that were demanding their own nations. Emperor Charles attempted to hold the empire together, but he was in no position to enforce Habsburg rule anymore. The Austria-Hungary Dual Monarchy was ended and Hungary given permission to make its own peace with the Allies and form its own government. Though the Austrian Army would continue to fight until November 4, the empire was dissolving and the population was short of food and supplies of all kinds.

By the second week of October 1918, three competing committees in three different cities declared their own independent Polish state. Meanwhile, Ukrainians did not want to lose eastern Galicia to the Poles and set up their own West Ukrainian People's Republic with its capital at Lemberg, now renamed Lvov. Poles took control of the city, but Ukrainians controlled the countryside east of the San River. A provisional government would rule until the Paris Peace Conference could arbitrate the status of the many proposed new countries of Europe.

The Jewish Question

What would happen to the millions of Jews in the new Polish State? This question was being asked by Polish and Jewish leaders and thinkers. Jews themselves were split.

Jewish religious leaders had worked hard over the years to maintain recognition of Galician Jews as an official religious and linguistic minority, favoring a degree of separateness in order to maintain traditions and customs. This was an important factor in keeping Jewish culture alive throughout the Diaspora (the scattering of the Jewish people after their exile from Judea nearly 1,900 years before). A growing number of Jews saw this as a counterproductive policy that encouraged resentment and increased risk.

To some Poles, the new country should have a strong ethnic and cultural "Polishness" and the existence of minorities—Ukrainians, Jews, Germans and Belarusians were present in large numbers—with their own civic and educational institutions was unacceptable. Some Polish writers and politicians advocated mass "Polonization" of Jews and other minorities, including the universal adoption of the Polish language. The new nationalist Polish National Democratic Party openly urged economic and social boycotts against Jews that would force them to leave the former Galicia and other Polish provinces altogether. This "Jewish Question" would be a continual feature of Polish politics for the next twenty years.

The Pogroms of 1918 and 1919

Lvov's Jewish minority, caught between warring nationalities, declared its neutrality in the fighting between Poles and Ukrainians, an action that was resented by some Polish leaders and army officers for many years. On November 22, 1918, the Polish Army disarmed and arrested member of the Jewish militia that had been keeping order in the city's Jewish Quarter and told locals that, as a reward for the defeat of the Ukrainians, they had 48 hours to sack the Jewish neighborhood. By the time the army moved in again to restore order, scores of Jews were killed and many hundreds were wounded. Jews were not the only minorities attacked (many Ukrainians were also killed), but over the next several weeks there followed a series of pogroms, organized attacks on Jewish neighborhoods, throughout Eastern Poland, including places that had enjoyed generations of peace between the religious groups.

In Zolynia that December, villagers carried a two-day pogrom against their Jewish neighbors. Twelve Jews were injured, including an 80-year-old man, and homes and shops in the market area were looted and pillaged. An army unit based at Lancut was called by town officials, but took no action when it arrived and left after half an hour.

• There was anti-Jewish violence in more than 100 other towns throughout Poland. In some countries, news of the pogroms was a blemish against Poland and reduced international sympathy for Polish autonomy.
• Delegates to the Paris Peace Conference insisted that Polish representatives sign a Minority Protection Treaty as a condition of formally recognizing Poland's independence. This treaty, signed in June 1919, contained language guaranteeing Polish citizens "total and complete protection of life and freedom" and civil and political rights regardless of "religion, creed or confession."
• For many years some Polish politicians used the supposed lack of Jewish support for the Polish cause at Lvov as proof that Jews were not true Poles, but a foreign people living in Poland.
• In small country towns like Zolynia, it is apparent that many ethnic Poles saw their Jewish neighbors as allies of the Austrian regime, a regime which had held back their progress. Many Jews were worried about their futures and their place in the new Poland.
• The New York Times of June 1, 1919 reports on recent pogroms against Jewish residents in 110 towns in Poland, including "Zolynia (District of Lancut.)"

Zionism and Jewish Nationalism in Zolynia

With the pogrom of 1918 and the growing feeling that Polish nationalism did not include them, there was an explosion of Zionist activities in Zolynia and hundreds of other communities in the former Western Galicia. Zionism was an international political movement that advocated the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine (placed under British control after the First World War). There were numerous forms of Zionism in interwar Poland and at least half a dozen organizations would have branches in Zolynia, and there were a dozen groups based in Lancut, representing a wide range of religious and political perspectives.

The first organizations were the Tzionim Klalim (the General Zionists, largest and oldest coalition within the movement, generally moderate in ideology) and the Mizrachi (the Religious Zionists, Orthodox Jews opposed to the secular aspects of most types of Zionism). Eventually there were youth organizations of various philosophical outlooks, including Bnei Akiva (sponsored by the Religious Zionists), Hanoar Hatzioni (Jewish scouting organization) and Betar (a Jewish self-defense group, more militant in its call for mass Jewish immigration to Palestine).
Less than 5% of Polish Jews actually immigrated to Palestine between the wars. These Zionist organizations had other objectives at the local level. They were dedicated to Jewish education, enlightenment and advocacy in Zolynia and Poland. They offered classes in Hebrew, the language of Jewish religious rituals that many Zionists promoted as a unifying language to replace Yiddish, and in Jewish history. In 1919, a Jewish library and an adjacent reading room were opened in Zolynia. For many, Zionism was a way for Jews to send a message to their neighbors about pride, liberty and even resistance.

The number of Jews continue to decline, and so in 1921 lived in the town of 569 Jews, however, constitute 59.6% of the population, while in 1939 they lived here 598. With trade remained more than 68% of them, from agriculture, only 7.5%.

The New Poland

It would take several years of negotiations, agreements, declarations, treaties and a major war with the new Bolshevik-controlled Soviet Union before the borders of the Second Polish Republic were finalized and recognized by the world community. For the next twenty years, there would be an ideological battle between those who saw Poland as a multicultural society and those who saw it primarily as a place for Poles alone. Meanwhile, the Jews of Zolynia were asserting their identity as they never had before.

Prior to the Second World War there were over 20,000 shtetls in Central and Eastern Europe, little towns and villages with substantial Jewish populations.

This is the story of Zolynia (Żołynia in Polish), just one of hundreds of small towns in rural southeastern Poland. It's on the highway between the larger towns of Lancut and Lezasjk, not far from the cities of Rzeszow, Jaraslow and Premysl. For two centuries, until 1942, people who were Jewish lived and worked in Zolynia and its surrounding villages.

Today, there are no Jews there. Their shops are gone, their language is unspoken, their entire culture almost erased. Almost. This site is a memorial to them, a testimony to their existence, and to what happened to them.

Zolynia, just prior to the Second World War, over 800 Jews lived in the Kehilla (Jewish Community) of Zolynia and more than a dozen surrounding villages. This is the world known by some of our grandparents and great–grandparents. If memory of that world disappears, it would be a victory for the Nazis who attempted to erase it.

Not just a Jewish story

This isn't a story just about Jewish people. The other people around them, Poles and Ukrainians and others, were part of their lives and part of the story, too. Since the 1990s, Żołynia there has been a growing desire, particularly among younger citizens, to uncover and examine painful and disturbing events that reshaped Poland. The relationships between the Jews and Gentiles of Zolynia were often complex, and sometimes there is no one correct answer to some difficult questions.

• What happened in Zolynia isn't a unique story, but perhaps there are important lessons to be learned from what happened in this one small town, and thousands like it throughout Europe.
• Lessons about tolerance and acceptance. Lessons about the danger of leaders who work to convince a large majority that their problems are imposed upon them by a small minority.
• Or perhaps it's just a story about people placed in an impossible, horrible situation.

In any case, this site attempts to provide information in a factual, balanced manner, trying to avoid hysterics, exaggerations and generalizations. Not everyone will be pleased by some of what is presented. But as reknowned Polish-born writer Eva Hoffman suggested in her 1997 book, Shtetl:

…'the truth and the past were far more striated, textured and many-sided than either nostalgia or bitterness would admit

The End of the Immigration Era

The United States severely limited the annual number of immigrants from Poland and other Central and East European countries in 1921, and passed even stricter limitations in 1924. Visa to go the the United States were difficult and required waiting on lists for years. By 1930, only 1,269 Polish citizens legally immigrated to the United States.

Dissolution of Zolynia Miasteczko

In 1919, an initiative was made by some Zolynia residents to merge Zolynia Miasteczko, the market town, with Zolynia Wies, the outlying village. The town had been losing population for years, the number of residents falling from 1,834 in 1880 to 1,711 in 1900 to 954 in 1921. The Wies area had also been losing population, but at a much lower rate, falling from just over 4,154 to 3,954 in the same period. Finally, after numerous appeals and delays by officials, the town was merged into the village in 1928. Protests were filed regarding possible voting irregularities in the 1929 elections for the new village council, and the new Zolynia Wies government could not fully function for another two years.

Zolynia was not the only town in the vicinity in which the mainly-Jewish central market area was merged with the larger, mainly-Christian village, according to a postwar account from a former resident of Rzeszow. A former resident of Kolbuszowa, just to the west, suggests that a particular concern over local control was appointment of the local board of tax assessors. Assessors would base personal taxes on perceived wealth, status and lifestyle: "Jews were usually discriminated against and assessed higher taxes than the Poles," he maintains.

Regardless of the reasons behind the dissolution of the market town, there were some clear practical results. In the last town elections before the war in 1914, 12 out of the 18 elected town council members were Jewish. In the first elections after the merger, none of the councilmembers elected to represent the expanded village were Jewish. In the new municipality, Jews were a distinct minority.

Legal restrictions on Jews in Interwar Poland

The wording of the Polish Constitutions of 1921 and 1935 guaranteed citizens freedom of conscience and religion and granted every national minority group full equality in the use of its language for all public, private and economic purposes. Equality before the law was a legal ideal, but it was not always an everyday reality.

• Jews were elected to the Sejm, the national legislature. However, it wasn't until 1931 that they could convince the Sejm to officially rescind discriminatory laws from the old pre-1772 Kingdom of Poland.

In another example, the telegraph company rejected telegrams written in Hebrew or Yiddish, even if words were spelled out in Latin characters, and telephone conversations in those languages were also banned (as a security measure). In 1923, Poland's General Prosecutor ruled that language could not be restricted in private conversations, but Hebrew and Yiddish could not be used in any public purpose.

The "Jewish Grandpa"

Josef Pilsudski, a popular war hero and former head of the new Polish Republic, had retired from Polish politics in 1923. Within a few years, the Polish economy was suffering with high inflation and unemployment the political situation was in chaos. In 1926, Pilsudski led the "May Coup" and his Sanacja party (a left-center coalition) took control of the Sejm and the government. Pilsduski usually had the title of Minister of Defense, but actually was acknowledged as dictator.
Pilsudski was personally opposed to antisemitism and did not object to minority groups retaining their cultural identify. He rejected the concept of ethnic assimilation, promoting the idea of "state assimilation" in which loyalty to the Polish Republic was built among all ethnic and religious groups. One of his first actions was to rescind the ban on speaking Yiddish in public assemblies, including municipal councils and the Sejm. Pilsudski was very popular among Jewish Poles, who sometimes called him "the Jewish Grandpa." Until his death in early 1935, Pilsudski held his archrivals, the hardline anti-semitic National Democrats (nicknamed the "Endeks") in check, and held back growing pressure on the Sanacja to deal with the "Jewish Question."

Struggle without injury

The National Democratics or "Endeks" were on the ascendency in most of Poland, offering millions of peasants, poor farmers, the unemployed and the underemployed a clear explanation of who was responsible. Meanwhile, the post-Pilsudski Sanacja coalition was trying to hold off the Endeks and remade itself into the OZN, a "Camp of National Unity." In an effort to maintain popularity and support, OZN began adopting some of the Endek positions on minority groups. By the end of 1937, OZN brochures began referring to Jews as "an element alien" to Poland.

OZN also endorsed the reduction of Poland's Jewish population by encouraging emigration to other countries. Although the government officially condemned violence against Jews, the slogan "Struggle, yes, but no physical injury" seemed to give approval to boycotts against Jewish businesses and professionals.

Zolynia Just Before the War

The population was smaller in Zolynia and the size and diversity of the local economy was smaller. The Jewish community was more diverse in some ways, but it remained a cohesive group in some important areas. By tradition, even Jews who were poor were expected to make some kind of contributions to those more in need. The Kahal was no longer an official government agency, but it remained a corporate entity, owning property and assessing voluntary fees on the congregation to support local Jewish poor and other causes. * Zolynia had a Gemilas Hesed (a Hebrew Free Loan Society), common in many shtetls in Europe, which made small, interest-free loans to people in need. Typically, loans might be made to help buy new equipment for a struggling craftsman or merchant, such as a sewing machine or pushcart. In 1929, 33 small loans were made, totaling 2,470 Polish zlotys (about $3,325 in U.S. currency in 2007). This was not enough to help many, and more and more Jewish-owned businesses in and around the market square went out of business.

• By the early 1930s, a little more than half of the town's dealers and shops listed in regional business directories were owned by Jews. Near the end of the 19th century, Jews had owned about three-fourths of them. While some local Jewish families were doing fairly well, living a comparative middle class lifestyle, more and more families were dependent on clothes and cash sent from children and relatives abroad.

Poland Transforming

Technically, the government argued, what was happening in Poland was neither discriminatory nor anti-Semitic. Raising of the economic status of peasants, explained the Minister of Internal Affairs in 1938, was "the higher economic values of the Polish nation. Therefore, the Jews have to understand that economic struggle against them is not a violation of their rights, nor is it an attack on them as citizens of the state."

There was no law that applied universally to all Jews, so the government claimed that formal equality under the law was being maintained. But the effect of these laws were clear. The Nationalists also took actions against ethnic Ukrainians, effectively closing many places of worship and social organizations.

1938, Jewish and Ukrainian deputies in the Sejm tried unsuccessfully to stop a new law that restricted members of national minorities in becoming approved members of the bar. The Minister of Justice would create lists of approved lawyers. The first list contained 63 names, none of them Jewish.

• There was a series of economic boycotts against Jewish-owned shops and professionals. In April 1937, the government issued an order requiring business signs to include the name of the owner, helping consumers identify Jewish businesses.
  
• Many towns banned markets within city limits, or opened markets only on Saturdays when Jewish residents could not shop or sell. Nationalist students at universities and colleges demanded the segregation of Jewish students in lecture halls.
  
• The first to establish this "bench ghetto" was Lwow Polytechnic Institute in December 1935. The practice later spread to many secondary and even elementary schools.
  
• Pressure to exclude Jews from higher education was working; the percentage of Jewish students enrolled in institutions of higher education fell from 20.4% in the 1928-1929 academic year to 7.5% in 1937-1938.
  

The Sejm passed, effective January 1, 1939, a ban on all Jewish ritual slaughter, ostensibly on humanitarian grounds, making it almost impossible for most Jews to consume meat. Some 40,000 Jews would be put out of work. A new law restricted the manufacture and trade of religious articles to people officially registered in the faith for which the articles were intended. The sponsor declared: "It is time to strive for complete economic freedom from alien elements." The target clearly was the Jews, who could no longer deal in Christian religious items.

By this time, many Jewish people in Poland who had never considered leaving Poland, their ancestral home for generations, were now willing to leave. Encouraging Jewish emigration was the single issue on which the Endeks and Zionist members of the national legislature agreed. Families in the United States tried to facilitate the acquisition of visas for loved ones in Zolynia, but the process was difficult and usually took years. Immigration to Palestine was also restricted by the British. But some had the means and the opportunity to leave, and did. During this time, a few Zolynia Jews ended up in Mexico, Canada and other places. Before the Second World War, there were hometown associations for Lancut Jews in New York, London, Paris and Palestine, and also in more exotic countries, including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica and Switzerland. It is likely that there were some Jews from Zolynia in at least some of these Lancut groups.

On December 21, 1938, 116 out of the 167 National Unity Camp delegates to the Sejm signed a statement declaring that "Jews are a factor weakening and blocking the normal development of the nation and state...they constitute a highly undesirable element, making it difficult for the Polish rural and urban population to stand on their own feet."

They demanded that the government "use all available means to organize the emigration of the Jews." The Prime Minister agreed that organized emigration was a prime "solution to the Jewish question in Poland, " that this was "unanimous Polish public opinion" and that the government would do everything it could "to create conditions that would enable an increase in emigration."

This was the policy of the Polish government on the eve of the Second World War.

Rabbis and Rebbes of Zolynia

• Rabbi Chaim Halbershtam was born in Tarnograd in 1793. His first Hasidic Rabbi was Yossel Halewi, the famous "Seer of Lublin," and by the age of 18 he was appointed Rabbi in the village of Rudnik, about 20 miles (32 km) north and west of Zolynia. In 1828, he was invited to become more tzaddik or "righteous teacher" in the large town of Nowy Sacz, located between Rzeszow and Krakow, called Sandz in Yiddish.

The town already had an official rabbi, Moshe Dawid Landau (see the reference to the Landau family below). Instead, Rabbi Halbershtam became the official rabbi in Zolynia. He stayed only a short time. He would become the official rabbi in Nowy Sacz (the Yiddish name is Sanz) and served there for 46 years until his death in 1876).

• Known as Rabbi Haimel the Sanzer, he founded the Sanz Dynasty of Hasidic rebbes. Considered by many to be the leader of Hassidism in Galicia, he was a strong conservative force; for example, he opposed all formal education for the masses, including Jewish education. His grave in Nowy Sacz is a pilgrimage site for Hasidic Jews. His seven sons were also rabbis, and founded at least five offshoot dynasties.

• Rabbi Yosef Moshe Teicher was the son, grandson, great-grandson, great-great-grandson, great-great-great-grandson and great-great-great-great-grandson of respected rabbis (his father was Rabbi Gershon of Ulanov and his grandfather was Rabbi Eliezer of Drohobycz). An acclaimed Torah scholar, he was a rabbi in Czudec, just outside of Rzeszow, for about ten years before becoming Grand Rabbi of Zolynia in 1848. Rebbe Yosef Moshe served in Zolynia until 1860, when he became the head of the rabbinical court in the city of Przemysl. Author of Imrei Yosef and considered an important Hasidic Tzaddik, he died in 1887, his place taken by his son-in-law, Rabbi Chaim Ende. It is known that his daughter, Beila, married Zwi-Hirsch Konigsberg and they lived in Zolynia until at least 1895.
• About 1867, Rebbe Moshe Landau was Zolynia's Rabbi. He was part of the rabbinical Landau family of Lezajsk.
• By 1880, Rebbe Avraham Yosef Igra (sometimes spelled "Eigra") settled in Zolynia. Hundreds of his followers visited him and some stayed in Zolynia, helping to revitalize and grow the Jewish community there. The "Rebbe of Zholin" was the son-in-law of Rebbe Mordecai Leifer of Nadvorna (see the chart above). The Leifer name is sometimes transliterated as "Laufer." Rebbe Avraham Yosef wrote the book Toldos Avraham Yosef, a major Hasidic work. A rabbinical chronicle says that "he was known to fast from one Sabbath to the next" and "would distribute all his money to the poor." After a few years, the Tsaddik and most of his followers moved to the city of Kishinev in present-day Moldava, and he died in Cracow in 1916.
• Rebbe Avraham Yosef Igra's position in Zolynia was taken by his brother-in-law, Rebbe Aharon Moshe Leifer (see the chart above), son of the famous Rebbe Mordecai of Nadvorna. Aharon Moshe was the son-in-law of a well-known rebbe in the nearby city of Rzeszow. He moved to Lancut and is considered part of the Lancut Dynasty of Hasidic rebbes that existed before the Second World War. Every year, followers visit his grave in Lancut. His son, Rabbi Avraham Mendel Leifer was another well-known rebbe in Kolomiya, Ukraine. A son-in-law was Yaakov Yisachar Ber Rosenbaum, the Grand Rabbi of Slotvina Sighet, whose three sons became Grand Rabbis there, including one who married the daughter of Yakov Leifer of Nadvorna and Debrecen (see chart above).
• When Aharon Moshe moved to Lancut, he was followed in Zolynia by at least three more rabbis of the Nadvorna dynasty: Rebbe Yisachar Ber Leifer (grand-nephew of Aharon Moshe), Rabbi Chaim Naftali and Rabbi Yoel Heller. Chronicles note that in the 1890s, Reb Yaakov Cohen was a rabbinical scholar serving under the Chief Rabbi of Zolynia. Details about exact years served are not known at this time.

Early in the 20th century, Rabbi Naftali Chaim Horwitz, the son of the distinguished Rabbi Meir of Dzikow (28 miles or 46 km east of Zolynia), became the official rabbi of Zolynia. At least two of his grandchildren became Admorim (honored rebbes) In Rzeszow, where local Jews sometimes referred to them as the "Zoliner Kinder." During the 1910s, the Zoliner Kinder left Galicia to settle in Palestine.

By 1912, Eli Horwitz (sometimes transliterated as "Horvitz") became rabbi in Zolynia. There were several fondly-remembered rabbis of the Horwitz family in Lancut during the 19th century. He was succeeded by Manashe Horwitz. In 1936, Aron Kornreich became the last rabbi of Zolynia.

Leaders of the Zolynia Kahal

Polish researcher Andrzej Potocki recently found the names of some of the chairmen of the Zolynia Kahal, the governing council of the Jewish congregation. In 1867, it was Mendel Goldman, followed by Mozes Katz, Ozjasz Stempel and Rubin Hauser. The last head of the Kahal in the 1930s was Zolta Ireiczman. At that time the Kehilla was legally no longer an official public agency, but more of a private corporation owned by Jewish residents.

Rabbi headstone

This partial headstone, photographed by Gedalia Fensterheim of Israel, hangs on display at the Jewish Museum at the former synagogue in Lancut. It memorializes a "modest and pious woman who followed the ways of our holy fathers," Gada, daughter of Reb (Mr.) Yakov Avigdor the Cohan, More Tzaddik Zhalin (Righteous Teacher of Zolynia)." The abbreviated spelling of Reb likely indicates that Yakov Avigdor was not a town rabbi or a rebbe, but he was a very respected teacher. The date and year of death is partly obscured.

Rabbi Mordechai Yisachar Ber Leifer is the present "Pittsburgher Rebbe," a great-great-grandson of Rebbe Mordechai Leifer of Nadvorna and a cousin to the Leifer Rebbes of Zolynia. He has large communities of followers in western Pennsylvania and in Ashdod, Israel. The Nadvorna Dynasty (named for the Galicia town now known as Nadvirna, Ukraine) may be the largest of any of the Hasidic dyansties, producing over 100 rebbes.

We don't know at this time if every rabbi of Zolynia was a rebbe, or if every rebbe was the "official" rabbi during his stay there. As always, additional information is welcome.

In the 18th and 19th-century Galicia, Hasidism was a grassroots, radical movement that was vehemently opposed by many "Orthodox" and traditional rabbis. Over time, Hasidic ideas greatly influenced traditional practices and thought and there was some blending. By the 1930s, most Jews in Zolynia practiced what today might be considered a fusion of Hasidic and modern Orthodox Judaism. There was a wide range of religous and political philosophy, as evidenced by the variety of Zionist and political groups in the village.

In the United States, immigrant Zholiners were generally Orthodox in practice, and many would become Reform or Conservative Jews. Today's growing Hasidic movement in the United States today was in large part a post-Holocaust phenomenon, established by surviving rebbes and their followers. Today, nine out of ten Jews in the United States and eight out of ten Jews in Israel consider themselves to be neither Orthodox nor Hasidic.

Thanks is given to Tomer Bruner, a Zolynia researcher in Israel, for his information about Rebbe Yosef Moshe Teicher.