Lipovets

A Jewish presence in Lipovets was first mentioned in regard to the mid-18th century. The Jewish population of Lipovets suffered greatly from the assaults of the Haidamaks in the late 1760s and many Jews left the locality during that period. In 1897 4,135 Jews lived in Lipovets, comprising 47.8 percent of the total population. Most of the Jews in Lipovets were craftsmen or merchants. The Jews of Lipovets were hit hard by World War I and the calamities of revolutionary years and civil war in Russia. At least 40 Lipovets Jews lost their lives in pogroms staged by various warring parties. In the Soviet period many Jews searched for new vocational possibilities. Some of the craftsmen and merchants who were unemployed due to Soviet policy turned to agriculture. In 1924 an agricultural collective Broyt un Arbet (Bread and Labor) was established near Lipovets; in the late 1920s or early 1930s it became a collective farm. In the late 1920s or 1930s two more Jewish kolkhozes were established near Lipovets. In the mid-1920s there was an ethnic Jewish council in Lipovets and a Jewish section within the framework of the local trade unions. There were also some Yiddish schools in Lipovets, one of which was named after the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. In the 1920s and 1930s many young Jews left Lipovets for larger towns and cities in search of new educational and vocational opportunities. In 1939 the 1,353 Jews of Lipovets comprised 52.6 of the town's total population. After the German attack against Poland that began on September 1, 1939 a number of Jewish refugees from Poland came to the town. Lipovets was occupied by German troops on July 23, 1941. Soon after the start of the occupation the German authorities imposed various restrictions on the Jewish population of Lipovets: e.g., they were forbidden to leave their homes during certain hours and forced to wear white armbands with blue Stars of David. Already in September 1941 about 200 men and young boys were shot, while the majority of Lipovets's Jews, numbering about 1,000, were murdered in the course of 1942. Lipovets was liberated by the Red Army on January 7, 1944.