The History of the Nadwórna Jewish Community
The Nadwórna Jewish Community in the Interwar Years
During WWI, the number of Jews living in Nadwórna plummeted to almost half, dropping to around only 2,000 people. Nevertheless, the Jewish community recovered from the war, and by the beginning of the 1930s some 3,500 Jews lived in the city – about half of the total population. The Jews of Nadwórna had representatives in the municipality, and around one-third of its members were Jews.
Most of the Jews in the town made their living from trade and light industry, but during WWI the Jewish community and its economy was severely damaged. After the war, attempts were made to revive it. During the early 1920s, a wood treatment factory was established under Jewish ownership, which provided raw materials for containers and export. Many Jews were employed at this factory, including pioneers of the hachshara (agricultural training in preparation for immigrating to the Land of Israel) brigades in the city. The "Foresta" company was also active in the city, leasing woodlands from the Polish authorities in order to chop timber and prepare it for export. Both the managers of the company in the city and its workers were Jewish. In 1939, a glass factory was established in Nadwórna, employing 40 Jewish workers.
Most of the Jewish tradesmen in the city belonged to the "Achva" trade union. Craftsmen belonged to the "Yad Harutzim" union. A charity association assisted these tradesmen and workers; in the 1930s dozens of loans were arranged on an annual basis.
At the head of the Jewish community were mostly Hassidim. In 1938, the left-wing socialist parties took hold of the community, as well as a formidable presence of the Zionist bloc, whose supporters came, for the most part, from the white-collar professions as well as tradesmen.
The Bund, Agudath Israel – which had many adherents – and many Zionist parties, including Poalei Zion, the General Zionists, the Revisionists, Mizrachi and Hapoel Mizrachi, all operated in the city. These parties established professional and academic unions, held lectures and performances, and ran youth groups and even pioneering hachsharot, whose trainees worked in Jewish-owned factories. The first Beitar hachshara in Poland was established in Nadwórna in 1929.
The Jews of Nadwórna ran drama circles and organized many cultural activities. Hebrew-language courses were opened even before WWI in the "Clear Speech" framework to teach the Hebrew language, as well as by the "Tarbut" educational network. These courses continued to run in Nadwórna until the eve of WWII. The city's public library, housing some 2,000 titles in Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew, which had been damaged during WWI, was restored. Many young people were active in the "Hakoach" and "Maccabi" sports associations.
Meir Hibner, an educator and Hebrew teacher, was active in Nadwórna. Hibner was one of the outstanding publishers in Galicia; he produced publications in Yiddish and German, as well as a geography work on the Land of Israel. Shmuel Rosenheck, an educator and a resident of the city who wrote satirical works, poems and articles, headed the "Tarbut" network of Hebrew-language schools in Poland; he eventually became one of the founders of Haifa University.
Nadwórna had over 20 prayer houses, including kloizim of all the Hassidic dynasties in the region: Kosov, Vizhnitz, Chortkov, Otynia and Belz. A number of admorim (Hassidic leaders) lived in Nadwórna; the last of these, Rabbi Chaim Leiper, was murdered in the Holocaust.
With the founding of the West Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918, groups of young Jews in Nadwórna gathered together to defend the community from Ukrainian plunderers. In 1920, six Jews in Nadwórna were murdered by forces of the Ukrainian nationalist Symon Petliura, and many were injured. In the 1930s, antisemitism in the city and its surroundings grew. Jewish merchants were attacked and Polish land and factory owners called for a boycott of Jewish wagon owners. In 1937, the government contract with the "Foresta" company – whose owners and workers in Nadwórna were Jewish – was terminated, due to interference by antisemitic Ukrainians and Poles. The company's Jewish employees were fired. On the eve of WWII, Ukrainian nationalists were active in the region, periodically attacking the Jews.