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Portrait of King Stephen Bathory of Poland (1585, attributed to Jost Amman)
Illustration of the Mogilev synagogue from Brockhaus and Efron Jewish Encyclopedia (1906—1913)
Mogilev (Yiddish מאָהליב) was one of the major cities in the Great Duchy of Lithuania, which united with the Kingdom of Poland in the 16th century into one state known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or Poland-Lithuania. The presence of Jews in Mogilev is first attested in the 16th century, when a Jewish man by the name of Ezofowicz was granted a lease to collect taxes for the period of three years. Ezofowicz also held a lease over a wax factory and several taverns in the city.
The Jewish and the Christian residents were in constant competition with each other. The Christians’ demands were at times accommodated by the Polish kings who occasionally imposed residential and economic restrictions on the Mogilev Jews. Thus in 1585 the Jews were to be expelled from the city by the order of king Stephen Báthory, yet the order was not carried into effect. In spite of the frictions and competition with the Christian population, the Jewish life in Mogilev flourished as attested by the construction of a new synagogue in Mogilev in the 17th century. The confrontation between Jews and Christians intensified in 1626 when another restrictive order was issued, though again without being carried into effect. The conflict came to a head in 1645 when the Jews became subject to a pogrom led by the city mayor himself. A year later king Władysław IV of Poland prohibited the Jews to rent apartments outside the Jewish quarter.
Starting from 1648 Poland-Lithuania was shaken by a period of violent conflicts, wars and foreign invasions. During the war between Poland and Russia in 1654 Mogilev was besieged by the tsarist army and the Christian residents of Mogilev consented to surrender upon the condition that the city would retain its self-government and that the Jews of Mogilev would be expelled. However, as the Jews were leaving the city they were attacked and killed. Those who preferred to stay were forced to convert to Christianity. This outburst of anti-Jewish violence was accompanied by a ban on Jewish residence in the city. These tragic events left a traumatic mark in the collective memory of the Mogilev Jews for generations to come as expressed in a special prayer commemorating the events heard in the Mogilev synagogues all the way till the 20th century.1
Despite the persecutions and outbursts of violence experienced by the Jews during the Russian-Polish War, the Jewish community was re-established when the city was restored to Poland-Lithuania in 1655. The legal status and the life of the Jews improved to a certain degree under king Jan Sobiecki III (1672-1696). In 1676 the Jews were permitted to build houses and to trade. Restrictions upon Jewish residence in Mogilev were lifted in 1678 and in 1680 the Jews inaugurated a new synagogue in the city.
After the first partition of Poland in 1772, Mogilev was annexed to the Russian Empire and became the capital city of the Mogilev governorate. The numbers of the Mogilev Jews increased significantly in the course of the 19th century. The census of the Russian Empire in 1897 registered 21,539 Jews who constituted half of the city's population. In spite of this sign of the vitality of the Jewish community, as the 20th century unfolded violent acts against the Mogilev Jews persisted. In 1904 a pogrom against the Mogilev Jews was perpetrated by tsarist Russian soldiers. Another pogrom occurred during the tumultuous period of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) and the ensuing Civil War. This time the culprits belonged to the Bolshevik camp. As of 1919 the city became part of the Byelorussian SSR, having been taken over by the Bolshevik forces.2