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Gomel

Community
Gomel
Belorussia (USSR)
Zamkovaya Street (now Lenin Boulevard) in Gomel, the early 20th century
Zamkovaya Street (now Lenin Boulevard) in Gomel, the early 20th century
YVA, Photo Collection, 2986/31
Jews began to settle in Gomel around the first half of the 16th Century. During the Khmelnitsky Uprising (1648-1649), many of the city's Jews were murdered by the Cossacks. At the end of the 19th Century, Gomel grew dramatically, becoming a hub of Jewish religious, political, and communal life. From the end of the 19th Century, many Gomel Jews were politically active, belonging to the Zionist organization and to the social-democratic Bund party. In 1897, there were 20,385 Jews in Gomel, comprising about 55 percent of the total population. In a pogrom in 1903, 10 Jews in Gomel were murdered; many others were wounded, and Jewish property was looted. During this pogrom, members of a Jewish self-defense organization led by Yekhezkiel Henkin, who would later become a founder of HaShomer, the Jewish defense organization in Eretz Israel, resisted the pogromists. Although the Jewish defenders were later put on trial, most of them were acquitted. In 1906, many Jewish houses were burned down during a three-day pogrom.

During World War I, many Jewish refugees from the western areas of the Russian Empire arrived in Gomel. Teachers and students from several yeshivas in Poland and Lithuania sought refuge in the city, too. One of the outstanding Jewish religious leaders living in Gomel at this time was the Chofetz Chaim (Rabbi Israel Meir HaCohen), one of the founders of the Orthodox Jewish Agudat Israel party.

The Jews of Gomel were seriously affected by the turbulence of the revolutionary years in Russia. In March 1919, an anti-Soviet revolt by two Red Army regiments in Gomel was accompanied by a pogrom.

After the establishment of Soviet rule, Jewish religious life continued, but was ultimately suppressed by the authorities. During the 1920-1930s, almost all the synagogues and prayer houses were transformed into living quarters or entertainment facilities. In 1921, the trial of Rabbi Barishanskiy, the first trial against Jewish religious activists in Soviet Russia, took place in Gomel. In the 1920s and 1930s, the city was home to several Yiddish schools and a Yiddish pedagogical college. In the 1920s, there was also a separate chamber of the city court where proceedings were conducted in Yiddish.

In the 1920s, the share of Jews in the population of Gomel began to shrink, largely because of the influx of non-Jews from the countryside. After the liquidation of private trade in the early 1930s, most of Gomel's Jews were industrial workers, government officials, or craftsmen.

40,880 Jews lived in Gomel in 1939, comprising 29.4 percent of the total population.

Most of the Jews were able to leave Gomel before August 19, 1941, when the city was occupied by German troops. Almost immediately afterwards, the remaining Jews were ordered to wear yellow patches and an armband with the Star of David. The Jews of Gomel were incarcerated in three ghettos – 800 inmates in the ghetto in the Monastyryok suburb, 500 (including about 100 Jews brought from the town of Loyev) in the ghetto on Novolyubenskaya Street, and several hundred in the ghetto on Bykhovskaya Street. There was another ghetto in Novo-Belitsa, a neighborhood on the left bank of the Sozh River. In September 1941, 200 of the inmates from Novo-Belitsa were transferred to the Monastyryok Ghetto. About 1,000 Jews were incarcerated in two labor camps established in the city. Some Gomel Jews were also sent to dig peat at the nearby Kabovka labor camp, where many of them perished.

The mortality rates in all ghettos were very high, because the inmates received only meager food rations, and lived in extremely overcrowded and very poor sanitary conditions. The ghetto inmates were forced to perform all kinds of arduous and senseless tasks, such as moving stones or logs from one place to another for no reason. They were required to hand over all their money, valuables, and furs to the Germans, and were forbidden to leave the ghetto or to have contact with the non-Jewish population. Any non-compliance with German orders was punished by beatings, often resulting in death.

The killing of Jews began almost immediately after the German occupation of the city. Between August and October 1941, dozens of Jews were murdered in and around Gomel, often after being accused of aiding the partisans.

The majority of the inmates of the three Gomel ghettos were murdered early in November 1941 in a large-scale massacre carried out by members of Einsatzkommando 8 and local auxiliary policemen. These victims were also accused of aiding the partisans. This mass murder was followed by killings of Jews who had been caught trying to evade the Nazis. In December 1941, 52 Jews who had attempted to conceal their identity were murdered. Jews from various villages in the Gomel District were also brought to Gomel at various times during its occupation, and, apparently, murdered there. Thus, 23 Jews from the village of Nosovichi, in the Terekhovka County, were deported to Gomel in winter 1942. In March 1942, three Jewish families (numbering 13 people) from the village of Terekhovka, the Terekhovka County, were also arrested and sent to Gomel, where they were shot. The exact dates and locations of these massacres are unknown.

The total number of Holocaust victims from Gomel is estimated at 3,000-4,000.

Gomel was liberated by the Red Army on November 26, 1943.

Gomel
Gomel City District
Gomel Region
Belorussia (USSR) (today Belarus)
52.442;30.986
Zamkovaya Street (now Lenin Boulevard) in Gomel, the early 20th century
YVA, Photo Collection, 2986/31
Members of the Jewish self-defence organization in Gomel
Photo Collection of Ghetto Fighters' House, Copy YVA 14616436
The building of one of the former Gomel synagogues. Photographer: Inna Gerasimova, 2010.
Inna Gerasimova, Copy YVA 14616168
The area of the former ghetto on Bykhovskaya Street, contemporary view. Photographer: Alexander Litin, 2018.
YVA, Photo Collection, 14615326
The area of the former ghetto in the Monastyryok neighborhood, contemporary view. Photographer: Alexander Litin, 2018.
YVA, Photo Collection, 14615327
The area of the former ghetto on Novolyubenskaya Street on Gomel, contemporary view. Photographer: Alexander Litin, 2018.
YVA, Photo Collection, 14615328
The area of the former ghetto in the Novo-Belitsa neighborhood in Gomel, contemporary view. Photographer: Alexander Litin, 2018.
YVA, Photo Collection, 14615329