Lost Jewish Worlds - Grodno

• Grodno
• Lidao
• Olkieniki
• Vishay

Grodno During World War I

On September 2, 1915, the Germans captured Grodno and occupied the city for three years. The war put an abrupt end to the city's economic boom, and Jews and non-Jews alike were plunged into a crisis situation. Nevertheless, the Jews continued to maintain lively cultural activity. Yiddish especially enjoyed a revival: Yiddish-language schools and a Yiddish theater were established, and many cultural activities were conducted in that language.

Between the World Wars

Under the terms of the Treaty of Riga (March 18, 1921), Poland received a large part of the territory that was claimed by both the Ukraine and Byelorussia. Poland's eastern boundary was demarcated more or less along the Russo-Polish border that had been set following the second partition of Poland in 1793. The Poles viewed this as a compromise solution between their aspirations for the historic borders and what they considered their ethnic territory. Within these compromise borders the proportion of non-Poles within the population was estimated at about 40 percent. In the eastern part of the country, the Byelorussians and the Ukrainians constituted the majority in the rural areas, but in the big cities the Poles and the Jews made up the majority. More than a million Germans resided primarily in the southwest of the country, in regions that in the past had been annexed to Prussia, while the Jews constituted slightly more than 10 percent of the population.

For reasons connected with the geography of elections, the Polish authorities enlarged the territory of Grodno by annexing to it suburbs and nearby villages. One result of this move was to reduce the relative proportion of the Jews in Greater Grodno. This demographic trend persisted through the 1920s and the 1930s, due to a combination of factors. Grodno, like most of the medium-sized cities and towns in Poland at this time, was feeling the consequences of rapid urbanization, a process that was most blatant among the Jews; many young people from Grodno sought their future in the larger towns and big cities. The situation was compounded by the Jews' low rate of natural increase: 8.9 percent, as compared with 18.5 percent among the general population. Thus, the proportion of the Jews in Grodno's population declined appreciably. Within ten years, between the censuses of 1921 and 1931, the proportion of the city's Jews dwindled from 54 percent to 42.6 percent.

The Jews' Economic and Occupational Structure. The standard of living among Grodno's Jews declined continuously in the inter-war period. Most made their livings as shopkeepers, peddlers and artisans; only a small group, consisting of industrialists, large merchants, and some employed in the liberal professions, enjoyed economic prosperity of one degree or another. The annexation of the Grodno region to Poland at the end of World War I and the loss of the huge Russian market meant that the population was dependent on the very limited internal Polish market. Since the Poles did not introduce agrarian reform, peasants with small plots ran economically independent households and did not need goods or services provided by artisans. Moreover, the Poles deprived Grodno of its status as the administrative center of a broad district; the new center was Bialystok, which was far from the border with Lithuania and from the Byelorussian villages and closer to the center of Poland, a development that played a role in the deterioration of the economic situation in Grodno.

These and other developments seriously affected the livelihood of the population in general and of the Jews in particular. The Polish authorities also adopted a consistent policy of removing the Jews from their economic positions. Moreover, the government gave Poles in the Grodno region, as throughout the eastern border area, land for settlement; loans and housing assistance; various concessions in commerce, industry, and small industry; positions in the government and the army; tax exemptions; and other benefits that were not given to Jews. At the same time, the taxation and levies system, together with the government's nationalization and monopolistic practices, adversely affected the Jews, who lost jobs in the government§run railway, telegraph, and postal services and suffered discrimination in the private sector as well. The Jews also suffered from the law-enforcement methods. The officials involved were at best unsympathetic to them and many were outright Jew-haters. The police hounded Jewish shopkeepers, fining them for every violation - real or imagined - of the sanitation regulations.

The years of economic depression radicalized internal conflicts and heightened anti-Jewish discrimination. The right-wing parties and the Polish population competed in making up antisemitic slogans and in conjuring up extreme solutions for the Jewish problem. Only one party, the PPS (Polish Socialist Party), occasionally objected to the surging antisemitism, but to little effect.

Commerce was the primary and major economic sector on which the government's anti-Jewish policy was focused. Already on December 18, 1919, the Polish government prohibited the opening of shops on Sundays and on Christian holidays. Although this was not necessarily directed against the Jews, it most certainly caused a serious reduction in their incomes. Later, the general economic crisis was fertile ground for an economic boycott of the Jews. Local and national merchants' associations launched a vigorous propaganda campaign against their Jewish colleagues under the slogan Swoj do swego (let everyone turn to his own people). The drive received the blessing of the rightist OZN (United National Camp) government.

Prime Minister Florian Slawoi-Skladkowski made clear his stand on the Jewish question on June 6, 1936, when he said, No one in Poland must be harmed, as a fair landlord does not permit anyone to hurt people in the house; [however] an economic struggle - of course [Owszem]! That last word was understood as the go-ahead to discriminate against the Jews by means of extreme economic measures. A highly inflammatory antisemitic propaganda campaign was launched. The press published defamatory articles and virulent antisemitic caricatures; anti-Jewish graffiti and posters appeared on walls of buildings; Jew-baiting leaflets were distributed on the streets; protest vigils were held in front of Jewish businesses; and shops owned by non-Jews were marked, the latter in some cases against the owners' will. The Poles introduced the term Christian shop, and, in the late 1930s, even carriage drivers bore the inscription Christian carriages on their caps. Jewish suppliers were also boycotted.

The intensive boycott propaganda affected both the simple folk and the educated. Not a day passed without an article appearing about a meeting, a lecture, protest vigils, the distribution of antisemitic handbills, and so forth. For example, the Swoj do swego group organized a solidarity month and a Polish merchant's day; merchants from Grodno and the surrounding area sent a delegation to Warsaw to demand that no Jews be given tobacco concessions; the nationalist-antisemitic Narodowa Demokracja (National Democracy) party, known as Endecja, held a mass rally and set up a special department to work for the economic dispossession of the Jews. The department circulated propaganda leaflets that played on the emotions of the Christians, with assertions such as There is no Poland without Polish commerce; Pole, defend Polish commerce; Poland without Jews is a strong Poland; Buying from Jews enriches them; and Buy from Christians in order to provide bread and jobs to the unemployed and to strengthen the state. The merchants' association, unwilling to stop at mere words, resorted to threats by blacklisting those who maintained commercial ties with Jews.

These aggressive economic measures were partially successful; quite a few Jewish merchants lost their clients and were forced to close. Nevertheless, some Poles continued to buy from Jews for the simple reason that their prices were lower.

State intervention led to the ouster of Jews from several economic branches in which the Jews of Grodno and the region held a prominent place, such as forest products and grains. The Jews' diminishing share in commerce during the inter-war period was consistent and unremitting. But if, until the mid-1930s, it stemmed mainly from socioeconomic trends among the population, the last five years before the war saw a constant intensification of deliberate anti-Jewish policies and harsh propaganda. In 1932, 694 of Grodno's 823 shops (84.3 percent) were still Jewish-owned. Five years later, although in absolute numbers there were more Jewish shops - 710 out of a total of 999 (most of the increase occurred in the food branch) - their relative proportion had declined to 71.1 percent. A few branches of commerce remained mainly in Jewish hands: soap, salted fish, glass, iron, and building materials.

Industry. Polish industry also suffered a sharp recession between the wars, and here, too, the Jews, whether as industrialists or as workers, were particularly hard hit. The combination of the monopoly system, which was introduced in Poland at this time, and the nationalization of large factories was calamitous for the Jews. One of the most flagrant cases was the nationalization of the Shershevski tobacco factory, which, before World War I, had been the third largest in all of Russia; its total work force fell from 1,800 to 650, of whom only 280 were Jews.

Some of the city's Jewish industrialists were nevertheless able to maintain their position even in this period, continuing to do business with non-Jews. For example, the construction company of Nahum Freydovicz (cement-pipes factory and building-materials stores and depots) continued to execute large-scale projects, such as barracks and bridges, mainly for the army.

Jewish factory workers were also victimized. As a rule, Jews were not hired by state-owned factories, or by those that had been transferred to the state in the monopolization process. Jews who were already working in these plants, in some cases for many years, were the first to be dismissed in every case of cutbacks. (Frequently they were sent on their way with the words Go to Palestine!) This was the situation in the matches, salt, and liquor industries. Even in those cases that they were not fired, Jewish workers found it difficult to compete with their non-Jewish colleagues: Many did not work on the Sabbath, and they always felt pressure that in order to keep their jobs they had to excel.

Crafts and Small Industry. Under the circumstances described above, it is not surprising that many of Grodno's Jews were compelled to earn a living as self-employed home-based workers, engaged primarily in crafts and small industry. However, here again, there were many difficulties. A law passed on June 27, 1927, obliged artisans to possess a master craftsman certificate as a condition for maintaining a workshop and employing apprentices. Yet only about 10 percent of Jewish craftsmen had such a document. In order to obtain a permit, it was necessary to pass a test conducted in Polish and pay a high fee. Nor should we overlook the examiners' hostility toward Jewish candidates. The 1927 law applied also to pupils, who had to attend a vocational school for three years and then specialize for three more years under a master craftsman. However, there were few professional schools, and Jews were not easily accepted.

In 1938, there were 1,146 artisans in Grodno, of whom 938 were Jews. They were divided as follows: 364 tailors (of whom 322 were Jews); 218 cobblers (168); 37 shoe stitchers (35); 80 ironmongers (68); 36 blacksmiths (19); 97 carpenters (83); 11 wagon-makers (6); 94 builders (54); 69 glaziers (4); 12 harness-makers (2); 10 upholsterers (1); and 37 milliners (1). Some crafts remained virtually Jewish even in these difficult times; these included pottery, tanning, engraving, and brush-making.

Liberal Professions. Although many of Grodno's Jews were educated, they were excluded from most of the relevant occupations, including the government bureaucracy. A good number therefore turned to the liberal professions, particularly medicine and law. However, the government took measures to counter this trend by introducing a numerus clausus system on the number of Jewish admissions to the faculties of law, medicine, pharmacology, and so forth. As a result, many young Jews went abroad to study. In the 1930s about half the physicians and lawyers in Grodno were Jews (some fifty physicians and forty lawyers, as well as a few engineers).

The publications of the Endecja party called tirelessly for extreme measures to be taken in order to oust the Jews from public service and from the liberal professions. This demand was well received among many Polish intellectuals. Finally an Aryan clause was imposed on these professions, and the party published lists of physicians and lawyers and distributed leaflets and posters urging Poles not to solicit the services of Jewish practitioners. (If you are sick, go only to a Christian physician!; Seek counsel only from a Christian lawyer!). In 1937, Endek students stepped up their vigils in front of Jewish law firms and medical clinics.

Banking. Before World War I there were six private banks in Grodno, all owned by Jews, as well as a Jewish savings fund and a low-interest fund for the indigent. These institutions played a crucial role in the Jews' economic life. There was no business, commercial enterprise, or factory in Grodno that did not have contacts with Jewish bankers. Seventy-five Jews (and their families) earned their living from banking. By the 1930s, however, not one Jewish bank remained in the city, and there were only two loan and savings funds, which employed twenty-two Jews between them. The private banks were replaced by government banks - from which Jews were rigorously excluded.

Thus, on the whole, the economic depression in inter-war Poland and its impact on commerce and business, in Grodno as throughout Poland, severely affected the Jews. They gradually lost their sources of livelihood, and unemployment among the Jewish population increased relentlessly; yet in the late 1930s, in the private business sector, even Jews without an income were forced to pay heavy taxes.

Few Jews benefited from the unemployment law of July 17, 1924, or from statutory rights such as an annual vacation or a pension. In theory this social legislation was not necessarily directed against Jews, but, in practice, they overlaid a series of laws that directly affected the Jews, because the benefits were granted to factories and workshops that employed more than four workers and the Jews almost always owned smaller workshops.

According to a partial estimate, one-third of Poland's Jews became welfare and charity cases, one-third lived on the brink of poverty, and the income and living standards of the rest also declined to some degree.

Antisemitism and Pogroms. Antisemitism, an ancient scourge in Poland, was sharply aggravated in the inter-war period as alienation between Jews and Poles intensified. The antisemitic atmosphere was most acutely felt in spheres in which Jews came into direct contact with Poles, such as in Polish schools or on the sports field. Verbal abuse of Jewish children in Polish schools was commonplace. Polish high-school students, influenced by the Endeks, forced their Jewish comrades to stand during lessons; the teachers, even those who were not antisemites, were usually afraid to intervene. Jewish

children often fell victim to antisemitic incidents on their way to or from school. Sundays were notoriously violent. On the way to the soccer stadium, Jews were set upon and beaten, and a victory by the Jewish side was sufficient reason for renewed attacks. Jews were also assaulted on the street and in public parks.

The recurring violence led Jewish youngsters to organize defense groups. The Brit ha-Hayal (Soldier's Alliance) in Grodno, consisting of strong young men, often came to the defense of individual Jews and even of the entire Jewish quarter.

No pogroms were perpetrated as long as Josef Pilsudski was in power. Although Pilsudski did not refer publicly to the Jewish question, he never excluded the Jews from the category of citizens possessing full and equal rights in the state. His personality was the major factor in the preservation of order in Poland. However, after his death, in May 1935, and as a result of economic stagnation and the rising strength of National Socialism in Germany, the influence of the Endecja party grew and antisemitism gathered new momentum in Poland. In the years before the outbreak of World War II, a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms washed across the entire country. Grodno was not spared.

On the night of June 6, 1935, in the course of a fight that broke out in a dance hall, a Jewish youngster stabbed his Christian adversary, who died on the way to the hospital. The deceased was a former sailor, and the rumor was circulated that a Jew had murdered a Polish soldier. When the police arrested the knife-wielding Jew, the episode seemed to have ended. But the next day anti-Jewish riots erupted after the funeral. About 1,000 people attended the last rites, among them many Endeks and members of the underworld who demanded vengeance. A large mob armed with iron bars, knives, and clubs stormed out of the cemetery and made its way to the city center. Within half an hour lawless gangs were rampaging across Grodno and attacking every Jew they encountered. As it happened, it was the Shavuot festival and many Jews were out walking and fell prey to the mob. The rioters smashed shop-windows in the commercial district, looted widely, and left a trail of destruction. Some rioters entered the Jewish quarter and smashed doors and windows with rocks and bars. They spared only the Shulhoif and the Troickie quarter, where physically imposing Jews - mainly butchers, porters, and wagoners - lived.

The Jews organized quickly. Community leaders and representatives of Jewish organizations met at Ha-Shomer ha-Za'ir headquarters and chose a self-defense committee consisting of Aharon Yizersky, Aharon Rubinczik, and Shmuel Diamant. The communists mobilized 200 people, ten of them bearing firearms. Teenagers were given the job of sitting by phones so as to coordinate communications and intelligence. A number of Poles, mostly friends or acquaintances of Jews, offered their help. Throughout the entire episode the police were flagrantly absent, claiming afterward that they had been occupied elsewhere.

The local authorities tried to suppress the event, but the Jews decided to go to court. In the course of the trial, the authorities blamed the Jews, and the incident ended with brief suspended sentences for the defendants; their leader was sentenced to one year in prison, was released on bail, and later pardoned.

A letter from the Va'ad ha-Kehillah to the district governor described the casualties and the damage inflicted during the riots of June 7-8, 1935, in Grodno: Gedaliah Becher and Yisrael Berzowski were killed; Shlomo Pozniak was hospitalized and his family was threatened with eviction from their apartment because they could not pay the hospital bill; Leib Buchinsky was hospitalized in Warsaw awaiting surgery and was in danger of losing his hand; all told, forty to fifty Jews were injured, and about 300 suffered property damage or lost their jobs. Damage was estimated at 30,000 zloty, but the Va'ad asked for only 5,000 zloty in compensation, and, after a lengthy delay the district authorities approved 1,000 zloty, to be divided among the injured families. Apart from the two victims mentioned above, a third Jew was killed seventeen days after the pogrom while passing in the street. This was not the last violent eruption of antisemitism in Grodno. In the remaining four years before the war there were increasing acts of hooliganism and violence motivated by antisemitism.

The Jewish Reaction. Grodno's Jews did not accept the economic boycott passively and

put up a relentless struggle for their right to work and earn a living. In the 1930s, as economic antisemitism intensified, the Jewish community also held protest rallies and demonstrations. On May 24, 1937, for example, they closed their shops and demonstrated for their right to live and work in peace. A gathering of Jewish small merchants from the entire region, held in Bialystok in August 1938, called on the authorities to put an end to the activity of the endeks who were generating hatred among the populace. A Jewish delegation from Grodno met with the official in charge of security to urge that the peace and security of the city's inhabitants be preserved, particularly in the commercial sphere. On October 20, 1937, the entire Jewish community demonstrated against the ghetto benches that had been installed in the country's universities and schools of higher education. However, none of the appeals - to the authorities or to the public - had any effect, and the situation continued to deteriorate.

At the same time Jewish communities and institutions organized for mutual assistance, establishing cooperatives, introducing direct-aid methods, making available professional training, and so forth. In Grodno the Va'ad ha-Kehillah was forced to cut its staff's salaries so that it could offer both one-time grants and monthly relief to the unemployed, who received no government aid. An increasing number of community members began turning to the charitable organizations; poverty cards, which exempted their holders from tax payments, were introduced.

Entrepreneurs tried their hand in new branches of commerce. For example, wagon owners from Sopockin, near Grodno, who used to make a living by hauling goods to and from the city, got together and bought a truck, and then a bus, and established a company that transported both people and goods between the two destinations.

Many Jews, particularly the young, opted for emigration. Some joined hakhsharah (pioneer-training) groups and reached Eretz Israel legally; others drew on the help of relatives in the United States and managed to emigrate despite the stringent immigration laws. Most of the other developed countries also imposed virtually insurmountable immigration barriers. Although, at the end of the 1930s, agreements were reached with Latin American states to take in Polish emigrants, shopkeepers and lessees were not welcome, nor were Jews in general. Among the countries in which Jews found refuge were Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba. The majority, however, and particularly those with families, remained in Poland. The complex logistical problems and enormous costs involved in the emigration of an entire family virtually ruled out this option.

Community Life and Institutions. Official Status and Organization. The Treaty of National Minorities, which was signed between Poland and the Allies at Versailles on June 28, 1919, assured the minorities of their physical safety, freedom of religion, the right to maintain educational, welfare, and charitable institutions, and to educate their children in their national language. The Treaty of Riga (March 18, 1921) also guaranteed the rights of the minorities in Poland. Under Article 7, Poland was committed to ensure the minorities the freedom to cultivate their culture, religion, and language. In practice, however, the Polish government deprived the Jews of these rights and adopted a discriminatory policy against them in most areas. In the first years of the independent Polish state, the Kehillah and its institutions continued to function almost as before - under government supervision and under pressure to confine their activity to religious activities. However, as the Kehillah was not permitted to levy mandatory taxes, it had to finance its budget independently, primarily by means of the services it rendered. Thus the public had to pay for the upkeep of the Jewish religious institutions. This was the situation in most of Poland (in the former Congress Poland the Dozor Boznicy [Synagogue Council, which resembled the French consistory introduced by Napoleon I] remained in effect). Only in 1927 was a new constitution approved for the Jewish communities in Poland in which the right to levy statutory taxes was included.

The Grodno Community Council was headed by the city's most affluent Jews. The first Community Council, which served from 1918 to 1921, consisted of twenty members, of whom ten were members of the executive (the Va'ad), representing the Bund, the Zionist Poalei Zion and Ze'irei Zion, and the haredim (ultra-Orthodox). The executive, which met in closed session, conducted its business in Yiddish, but recorded the minutes in the official language of the state, as the government authorities demanded.

Activities and Budget. According to the executive's annual budget report for 1930, the main expenditures were: taxes to the authorities, rent for the Kehillah's premises, funding of relief and social-welfare institutions (hospitals, orphanages), salaries to teachers and the Kehillah staff, and expenses for religious needs and administration. The main sources of income - payment for ritual slaughter and for burial, and tuition fees paid by some pupils - were supplemented by assistance from TOZ (the Jewish Health Care Organization) and a subsidy from the municipality. Nevertheless, a certain deficit remained. The Kehillah also had a Control Committee that examined the finances and the books, the allocation of subsidies, and the operation of all the Council's departments and institutions: the slaughter house, bath house, burial society (which to some degree was financially self-sufficient), library, and numerous other social-welfare and cultural institutions that were the distinguishing features of the Kehillah organization.

Among the relief and social-welfare institutions in Grodno were benevolent funds that provided interest-free loans to small shopkeepers and artisans who were in financial need. Rather than interest, the recipients committed themselves to fixed monthly payments in order to cover the fund's expenses. The fund's capital came from three sources: stocks, aid from the United States, and assistance from the national organization of benevolent funds in Poland.

The Jewish medical system in Poland during the inter-war period did not cover everyone. Workers in large enterprises, teachers, and public servants had medical insurance and were treated free of charge. However, large sections of the public were not entitled to any health services, and private medicine flourished. The state health authorities had virtually nothing to do with public health and sanitation and, other than inoculating the population against smallpox, did nothing to curb infectious diseases and epidemics. Linat Zedek was a Jewish association of volunteers who sat with the sick at night so that family members could rest; they also loaned medical equipment to ill persons who could not afford the purchase price, provided the indigent with medical attention, medicines, and even financial aid, and, if necessary, financed medical treatment in hospitals in Grodno or Bialystok. The association's funds were raised from the proceeds from stage performances and film days.

There were many other relief and charitable institutions and associations in the community, including an old-age home, an orphanage, the rescue committee (Va'ad ha-Hazalah), the yeshivah's kitchen, lodgings for transients, the Hekdesh (accommodations for the poor and the sick), Kimha de-Piskha (a campaign to supply the poor with matzah for Passover), Hakhnasat Kallah (dowries for poor brides), and Lehem Ani'im (bread for the poor). There was also a legal bureau in which Jewish lawyers, on a rotating basis, offered free legal advice. TOZ arranged medical treatment and monitoring for pregnant, post-natal, and nursing women; organized compulsory medical checkups in the schools; and ran summer camps for children.

However, not everything in the Kehillah was on a volunteer basis. The Community Council was entitled to request payment for various services, such as ritual slaughter, marriages, circumcisions, and burials. Taxes, generally in the form of a commitment to make a monthly contribution, were imposed on the affluent in order to cover the cost of the various staffs and the maintenance of institutions. Additional sources of income were financial aid from former residents who had settled in the United States and from the Swiss branch of the Joint Distribution Committee.

The Grodno Va'ad ha-Kehillah occasionally offered welfare aid to Jews outside the city as well. For example, the Community Council was one of the first to respond to the call that was issued on June 6, 1922, to provide generous assistance to starving Jews in Russia and the Ukraine. Grodno's Jews also came to the aid of Iwia Jews after the pogrom of 1929, and assisted the Jews of Lunna in 1931. In 1927, following an earthquake in Palestine, there was a call in Grodno to establish a committee in order to coordinate aid for the casualties. A leaflet urged all the worshippers at the Beit ha-Midrash and the representatives of Jewish organizations and societies to meet in the office of the Va'ad ha-Kehillah in order to launch the aid operation.

Involvement of a different kind was manifested in the form of concern for Germany's Jews. On May 1, 1933, the Kehillah sent the League of Nations a petition protesting the persecution of the Jews in Germany, and, in late 1938, when Jewish citizens of Poland were deported from Germany to Zbaszyn (Zbonshin) on the Polish border, the community collected clothing and food for the refugees. Some of them actually reached Grodno (including former residents of the city) and were helped to settle there by the Jewish community.

Religion and Tradition. Grodno was known as a Jewish city because of its pervasive Jewish-traditional atmosphere. This had less to do with the large proportion of Jews in the population than with the community's attitude toward religion and tradition. True, in the inter-war period there was increasing secularization among Jews, and most strikingly among the young; yet even secular homes continued to uphold the basic elements of tradition. Parents of children attending Polish schools saw to it that the youngsters received a Jewish education, either by hiring private tutors or by sending the children to heder. The Jewish atmosphere was also prevalent because of the many Jewish buildings that dotted the streets. In 1931, there were in Grodno thirty-six synagogues, houses of worship, or Hassidic kloizim. The many minyanim - of wagoners, glaziers, tailors, carpenters, workers, furriers, and so forth - continued to exist throughout the decade, despite the worsening condition of Poland's Jews. Grodno's central synagogue dated from ancient times, and around it were smaller houses of worship that together constituted the Shulhoif, the hub of the city's Jewish religious life.

In the final two decades of its existence, the Grodno Kehillah was the site of the renowned Sha'arei Torah yeshivah. Founded during World War I under the German occupation by and at the initiative of the students themselves, the yeshivah was originally headed by Rabbi Alter Shmuelevicz. His successor between 1920 and 1939, the famous scholar Rabbi Shimon Shkop, raised the level of the institution and transformed it into one of the finest yeshivot in Poland and beyond. Hundreds of young men flocked to Sha'arei Torah from near and far. Rabbi Shkop's novellae on the Talmud are still studied in yeshivot throughout the world today.

Education. The Jewish educational system in Grodno consisted of a large variety of elementary and high schools, both general and professional, as well as hadarim and yeshivot. They were associated with a broad range of ideological tracks. In practice, only the affluent could take full advantage of the large selection of educational institutions. Parents with limited means could not afford the high tuition fees demanded by most of the Jewish schools, which were forced to operate as private schools as a result of the government's policy. The state-run elementary schools, which operated in accordance with the compulsory education law (children had to attend school until Grade 7 in cities and until Grade 4 in rural areas), were open to everyone, including Jewish children. The government also placed at the Jews' disposal a number of elementary schools of their own (which were known as Shabatovka because there were no classes on the Sabbath). Nevertheless, it was no simple matter for Jewish children to be admitted to government-run schools.

The overriding problem, however, was that the Jews were effectively deprived of the right to run a separate educational system under government auspices and had to finance most of their educational institutions, and particularly the high schools, with their own resources. As a rule only Jewish schools in which the language of instruction was Polish and in which the Polish educational format prevailed were able to receive government recognition. Even then this was only with great difficulty. Jewish parents who wanted to give their children a high-school education had practically no choice but to establish their own schools.

Any survey of the Jewish private educational institutions should begin with the schools of the Tarbut system, founded by the Zionists. They began operating in Grodno in 1922, and, within a few years, established two kindergartens, an elementary school, a high school, and a teachers' college. Hebrew was the language of instruction in all Tarbut institutions. Most of the teachers, including the high-school principal, David Brawer, were from Galicia. In 1927, one-third of the city's Jewish children attended a Tarbut school. However, the absence of outside funding kept tuition fees high, and although partial scholarships were available, these schools were not a realistic option for the poor.

In Grodno, as in many other locales that had previously been situated in Poland's eastern frontier area, the percentage of children attending private schools was high from the outset, as compared with Congress Poland and Galicia. The reason was that the Russians, too, ran few government schools, and Jews were not readily admitted.

Jewish Elementary Schools. In 1920, the Mizrachi movement founded the Yavneh religious school. Although it was originally called Torah va-Da'at, it was renamed in 1925; the language of instruction was also changed from Yiddish to Polish in order to obtain government recognition. The curriculum consisted of general as well as Judaic studies in the national-religious (dati-leummi) stream. Most of the pupils were from indigent families and could only pay the tuition fees in part, if at all. However, some wealthy families also sent their children to Yavneh, where they could receive a deeper grounding in Judaism than they could in government schools or even in Tarbut. A few teachers in Yavneh were permanent, but for the most part there was a high staff turnover because salaries were not paid regularly. Mizrachi also established a girls' school, Havatselet.

Grodno had a Talmud Torah boys' school with an enrollment of about 600 in the 1930s. Many of the pupils were from poor families who lived in the Shulhoif. Instruction was conducted in three languages: Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew. The teachers belonged to different streams: assimilationists from Galicia, Bundist-Yiddishists, Zionists and Poalei Zion Left. Pupils in the Talmud Torah wore uniforms and ate a communal breakfast. Financing came from the Kehillah budget, but was insufficient. The institution was constantly in economic difficulties, and the teachers, who did not receive a regular salary, frequently went on strike; for a time the school was even in danger of closing.

In 1924, the CISHO (Central Federation of Jewish Schools) network established a seven-grade school and a kindergarten in Grodno with a distinctly proletarian, secular character. For ideological reasons, the language of instruction was Yiddish. CISHO was founded in Poland in 1921 by the Bund; later Poalei Zion became a partner, even though the school continued to be controlled by the anti-Zionist Bund. The CISHO school received government recognition in its very first year of operation as a result of intensive lobbying efforts.

Jewish High Schools. Grodno had two Jewish high schools, one run by Tarbut and the other a re'ali (science-oriented) school. The Tarbut school, with its Hebrew-Zionist character and Hebrew as the language of instruction, was not recognized by the government. Thus it received no state aid, nor were its graduates entitled to a state diploma; those who wanted a high-school graduation diploma had to sit for external examinations in Vilna or Warsaw. Nevertheless, the Tarbut high school was known for its high academic level and was a popular institution.In the re'ali high school the language of instruction was Polish, assuring it government recognition and enabling students to take the final examinations of the state system. Tuition was steep, however children of civil servants were exempt from payment. The school had high academic standards and a rich extracurricular program, including a choir and orchestra, sports activities (there were volleyball and ping-pong teams), and so forth. The school's history department even published a history of Grodno in 1,000 copies, with proceeds from sales going toward the building of a history library and reading room.

Vocational Schools. As a result of the Polish government's discriminatory policy, which prevented Jewish youngsters from attending institutions of higher education and entering academic professions, many turned to vocational studies. This was the case not only within proletarian families but also among those who had completed or partially completed high school.

In 1924, the ORT vocational school for Jewish boys in Grodno (founded 1911) had ninety-four pupils. The academic level was high, and, in addition to vocational workshops, pupils also studied Polish, mathematics, physics, mechanics, draftsmanship, and other subjects. About half the budget was financed by ICA; the rest came from tuition fees, the Joint Distribution Committee, donations, and the sale of products made in the workshops, which were known for their high quality (even the army ordered certain items from the school). Between 1925 and 1930, many of the school's graduates, assisted by the school's administration and the world ORT organization, went to France in order to specialize. Some of them remained there during World War II. Many settled in Eretz Israel or in other countries.

In 1922, ORT opened a vocational school for girls in Grodno, teaching mainly sewing and other crafts.

The Tarbut teachers' seminary in Grodno was founded in 1926, at the initiative of David Brawer and Noah Bass. For the first five years, the curriculum was based on the model of government seminaries and the Jewish seminary in Vilna, with slight modifications. Most of the teachers were from Galicia. The first class (fifty-one students) graduated in 1930/31, and, by 1936, when the college was closed because of a particular Polish law, it had trained about 200 teachers who were working throughout the country. The Jewish teachers' college was granted the official rights of a recognized teaching institution in Poland.

Not all the Jewish children in Grodno were able to continue their studies after elementary school. Many had to work in order to help support their families.

Cultural Life. Jewish Grodno was a beehive of cultural activity. The city was a magnet for theater companies, actors, singers, famous cantors, renowned choirs, intellectuals, and public figures from Poland and elsewhere. Visitors included Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Shaul Tchernichowsky, and Chaim Nahman Bialik, who was surprised to hear the local children speaking Hebrew. The visitors met with the townspeople in the Great Synagogue or in one of the many batei midrash.

A large number of dramatic groups were active in the city, for the most part in Yiddish. The Polish authorities, however, tried to counteract this trend, levying heavy taxes on Yiddish performances, making it difficult for Jewish theater groups to rent halls, and, in particular, setting stringent conditions in order to obtain a permit for Jewish productions. So as to circumvent this discrimination the Jews founded the Yiddish Teater Gesellschaft theater society, which was affiliated with the Va'ad ha-Kehillah and had considerable success in its confrontations with the municipal authorities. An important achievement was that the municipal theater was made available for Jewish productions eight times a month free of charge.

This intensive cultural and artistic activity was not confined only to the city. Grodno troupes, led by the well-known actor and singer Michael Trielling and the popular comedian Yitzhak Azarkh, frequently toured the surrounding towns. Not every town could be reached by bus, and the actors sometimes had to travel by horse-and-carriage; at times they appeared in a barn or cowshed.

Particularly notable among the many Jewish choirs and orchestras in Grodno were the choir of the Great Synagogue and the brass band of the city's firefighters, which was almost entirely Jewish. Orchestras were also maintained by Tarbut institutions, sports associations, and Jewish youth organizations, such as the string orchestra of the Dror-Freiheit youth movement and the mandolin orchestra of the CISHO school.

The major figure in the city's musical life was Reuven Vigderowitz - choirmaster, teacher, and composer - who was also a famous harmonica virtuoso. He conducted students' choirs, including the Tarbut choir, and adult choirs such as Hashmona'i (Hasmonean, the name given to the Maccabee choir after it was shut down by the authorities). In 1937-1938 Vigderowitz formed a popular choir of 120 men and women. This was a considerable accomplishment given the deteriorating economic situation and the charged atmosphere created by the surging antisemitism. The choir performed in the municipal theater and in the surrounding area. Most of its members were workers and Bund members (initially they refused to sing Bialik's After My Death in Hebrew, which was set to music by Vigderowitz, but finally they yielded to their conductor's importunings).

The city's public library was large for that time, with 2,536 volumes in Yiddish, 1,907 in Hebrew, and many in Russian. However, no new books were purchased because of insufficient funds; in 1933/34, for example, the library acquired only two new books, one in Yiddish and one in Hebrew. Jewish organizations in the city also maintained libraries, notably the Brenner Library of Poalei Zion.

Various Yiddish daily papers and weeklies were published in Grodno, providing the Jewish population with information about events in the community, the municipality, and on job openings, as well as reporting critically on the Va'ad ha-Kehillah and other Jewish institutions. Much was written about harmful actions taken by the authorities and by the non§Jewish population and about the struggle of the Jews to realize their rights. In large part these were national papers in Yiddish, originating in Warsaw and other cities, with only the front and back pages printed locally. But Grodno also had its own papers. The daily Grodner Moment began to appear on September 5, 1924, edited by David Berezowski, and continued publication until the outbreak of World War II, except between 1928 and 1931, when it was replaced by the Unser Grodner Ekspress.

In the 1930s, the Grodner Kurrier was published as an afternoon edition of Grodner Moment. Grodner Radio and Heintike Neies (Daily News), both of which appeared in Grodno in 1931, were published in Warsaw and brought to Grodno, where local items were added, such as announcements about meetings for the benefit of the unemployed, information about the orphanage, and the like. Grodner Leben (Grodno Life) was a nonparty daily edited by Shmuel Garbe and appeared from 1936 to 1939.

Notable among the Jewish weeklies were: Unser Leben (Our Life), the first Zionist weekly in Grodno, which began publication in 1926-1927, and was edited by Yitzhak Solowieyczyk, with Zvi Bielko as chief contributor; the Bund's Grodner Shtimme (Voice of Grodno), founded in 1927 - its first editor (until 1935) was Moshe Rubinstein - appeared regularly until the start of the war, even though it constantly incensed the authorities, who often tried members of its editorial board; and Unser Wort (Our Word), the journal of the Working Eretz Israel Movement, which began to appear in 1933, and was edited by A. Palnitsky.

Sport. Several Jewish sports clubs operated in Grodno, most notably Maccabee (founded in 1919), which, thanks to its excellent reputation, enjoyed the support of the city's affluent population. The club ran a good soccer team, and its track and field branch was also well developed. However, for a time the Polish government prohibited its operation. In 1924, the club operated secretly under other names, such as Hashmona'i, but a year later resumed activity under its own name and even added new sports, such as bicycling, boxing, skiing, and a section for military training; in 1938, basketball was also added.The Ha-Koah (Power) association, founded by Poalei Zion-ZS, was the first manifestation of the party's sports movement in Poland, preceding Hapoel. Ha-Koah ran teams in soccer, gymnastics, table tennis, and chess. The many youngsters who were active in this club were inculcated with the ideology of the Dror movement.

In 1928, the Bund established the Morgenstern (Morning Star) sports club, which featured several gymnastics groups, a soccer team, and a table tennis section. The club also published a bulletin called Arbeter Sportler, which was circulated throughout Poland.

Ha-Shomer ha-Za'ir also had its own sports organization, known as Shomriyah. Here the emphasis was on gymnastics and volleyball. Shomriyah members participated in an annual sports demonstration held in the city.

Political and Zionist Activity. Grodno's Jews were active in political life on both the national and municipal levels, within the framework of Jewish parties or on joint lists with other minorities. In the 1928 elections, 70 percent of the eligible Jews voted, as compared with 60 percent of the Poles.

The main activities, however, focused on intra-Jewish politics. Virtually all streams, viewpoints, parties, and movements were represented in Jewish Grodno. Political activity was at its most intense during the campaigns for the Sejm and the Senate or, at the local level, for the municipality and the Va'ad ha-Kehillah. The influence of the Jewish parties and movements went beyond politics or ideology. They formed lists to run in elections, established educational institutions, published journals, and served as social centers.

After World War I, two large political blocs emerged in Jewish Grodno. The Zionist camp, the larger of the two, included the General Zionists, the Zionist left, the national-religious, and the Revisionists; the non-Zionist camp was comprised, on the one hand, of the anti-Zionistleft - the Bund and the Communist underground - and, on the other hand, of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel and groups of Hassidim, as well as ordinary haredim, who did not recognize the Agudah.

The Zionists maintained lively activity in the city. Nearly every week groups of settlers left for Eretz Israel, among them not only halutzim, but also merchants and artisans from the middle class, individuals as well as entire families. It is estimated that, by 1935, between 4,000 and 5,000 Grodno residents had settled in Eretz Israel.

The Zionist movement had a building of its own, which housed the various factions and organizations: General Zionists, the Hitahdut and Poalei Zion-ZS, the youth movements, organizations like WIZO, the national funds (Keren Hayesod and the Jewish National Fund), the Eretz Israel Office, which dealt with aliyah, the Brenner Library, and others. Besides ongoing activity the center was also the arena of the election campaigns for the Zionist institutions and maintained contact with the surrounding towns of Jeziory, Ostryn, Amdur, Lunna, Nowy Dwor, Suchowola, Sokolka, Skidel, and Porzecze. At the time of the 1928 elections, there were 12,000 Zionist activists and sympathizers in Grodno and the region.

In 1921, a year after Poalei Zion split into left and right wings, the movement's young members in Grodno chose to affiliate themselves with the Zionist-socialist right-wing. In 1925, Poalei Zion merged with ZS (Zionist-Socialists), and the united organization became the majority faction in Grodno. Most of its members were salaried workers and clerks, although there were also those in the liberal professions, and teachers, artisans, and small shopkeepers. ZS also brought with them to the Zionist House the Brenner Library, with its thousands of volumes in Yiddish and Hebrew on the Jewish labor movement and on socialist Zionism. The library also attracted many readers who were not organized in youth movements but became the nucleus of the Freiheit (Freedom) movement.

Poalei Zion-ZS was also active in Grodno's trade unions and maintained contacts with non-Jewish workers' parties. Prior to the municipal elections of 1929, the party joined with the Bund and the PPS (Polish Socialist Party) to create a united socialist bloc; afterward the three parties formed a joint socialist faction in the municipal council. Poalei Zion-ZS was also influential in the district towns, where it numbered some 3,000 members and supporters. Poalei Zion Left, on the other hand, won only slight support in Grodno and the surrounding district and did not run a list in the 1928 elections.

Another prominent group in Grodno and the area, particularly among the Jewish intelligentsia, was the Hitahdut (Socialist-Zionist Labor Party). In the 1920s, this faction did much to strengthen the He-Halutz organization and promote aliyah. The Hitahdut advocated the revival of the Hebrew language and was among the initiators and supporters of the Tarbut school system. In 1928 it had about 2,800 members and supporters in the city.

The national-religious Ha-Mizrachi faction was established after World War I. In Grodno its members were among the veterans of the Zionist camp. In 1921, all fourteen of its candidates were elected to the Community Council, and for years it was the third largest party in Grodno in terms of the number of electors to the Zionist Congresses. The movement's Grodno branch also had various affiliates: Ze'irei Ha-Mizrachi (Young Mizrachi), Torah va-Avodah (Torah and Labor), Ha-Shomer ha-Dati (Religious Guardian), and He-Halutz Ha-Mizrachi. In 1935 a branch of the Center for Religious Artisans was founded in the city.

The Revisionist Movement was established following Ze'ev Jabotinsky's resignation from the Zionist Executive in 1923. The new organization soon acquired an influential status in Grodno, and Jabotinsky was enthusiastically welcomed when he visited the city. The movement's chairman, Dr. Blumstein, also served as the head of the Kehillah. In addition to the Revisionists' youth movement, Betar, a paramilitary group called the Brit ha-Hayal (Soldier's Alliance) was active. Its members were mainly ordinary working-class folk - porters, wagoners, butchers, etc. - who were ready to fight for their people, as they exhibited during the 1935 pogrom.

The non-Zionist camp included the Bund, the first and largest Jewish socialist party, founded in 1897 in tsarist Russia. However, in inter-war Poland its influence was initially quite limited. The turning point, which transformed the Bund into a mass party in Poland, occurred in 1936. Then the Jews' economic and security situation deteriorated, while the immigration quotas to Palestine were slashed, and the United States and other countries blocked immigration altogether.

In Grodno the Bund gained a majority already in 1928, in the elections to the Va'ad ha-Kehillah, and it had the allegiance of 3,000 members and supporters. Its main strength came from the Jewish workers in the city's veteran tanning industry, but it also drew support from many intellectuals as well as from workers and artisans.

The Communist Party was outlawed in Poland and thus operated underground, but this did not deter many Jews from joining it, in the belief that a communist regime would solve the Jewish problem. The surging antisemitism in Poland in the 1930s only strengthened the communists and attracted to them respected members of the community, such as the lawyer Gozhansky.

The ultra-Orthodox element in the non-Zionist camp was represented first and foremost by Agudat Israel. In 1918 Agudat Israel was still an umbrella organization for many Grodno haredim who did not belong to any party, including those who rejected the Zionist shekel (a tax paid on the eve of each Zionist Congress). It was not until a few years later that the Grodno faction organized itself as a party subordinate to the center in Warsaw. Its strength lay in the influence it exerted over the community's religious institutions, such as houses of worship, hadarim and yeshivot. In 1934, the party established its own educational system in Grodno, comprising a kindergarten, the Beth Ya'acov girls' school, and later also a college for ultra-Orthodox teachers. A police report describes the members of Agudat Shlomei Israel (some 3,000 in number) as being loyal to the government (indeed, they believed in the ancient dictum, Dina de-malkhuta Dina - the law of the land is binding - and often voted for the ruling party).

Besides the parties, all the Jewish youth movements and organizations in Poland had branches in Grodno. Most were affiliated with a party and constituted its future membership, yet they enjoyed relative independence and were not bound to an ideological line dictated from above. Founded for the most part in the 1920s, the youth movements conducted their activities in rented premises and sometimes owned a modest library. Activities included educating young scouts, going on nature hikes, visiting nearby towns, and the like.

The strongest youth movements in Grodno were Dror, Ha-Shomer ha-Za'ir, and Betar (Revisionists). Dror was founded in 1926, as a union of He-Halutz ha-Za'ir and Freiheit, the movements of Poalei Zion and ZS. At the end of 1927, the Dror branch in Grodno was one of the largest in Poland, numbering some 200 members from all walks of life. The major ideological difference between the two movements lay in their choice of language: He-Halutz ha-Za'ir preferred Hebrew, while Freiheit opted to cultivate Yiddish culture among its young members. The movement ran eleven amateur groups, including a drama group, a string orchestra, and the Ha-Koah sports association. The emphasis was on what they called Eretz Israel work and aliyah, including work for the national funds. The young people also took part in trade-union activity and in demonstrations of a socialist character and maintained contacts with branches of the movement in Jeziory, Amdur, Sopockin, Sokolka, Skidel, and Krinki.

Ha-Shomer ha-Za'ir, a left-wing, pioneering-scouting movement, inaugurated its activity in Grodno in 1923/24 with a boys' group called Ahdut and a girls' group called Kadimah. Their activity quickly spread outside the city as well. Young people from all the surrounding towns joined, and the movement leadership in Grodno organized local branches for them. Very soon a Grodno district center was established, which cooperated with the Vilna and Bialystok districts. Among other programs, the Grodno district organized summer camps for youth from the entire region. Every year Ha-Shomer groups and their leaders went to local villages where they rented peasants' homes and devoted their time to ideological studies, sports, scouting, and cultivating Hebrew song. In 1926, a co-ed group called Karit inaugurated a permanent hakhsharah program at Czenstochowa and Siemiatycze. Although the group later disbanded, as many of its members settled in Eretz Israel (among them founders of Kibbutz Ein ha-Horesh) and others pursued their education, it enshrined the idea of hakhsharah (agricultural training) and aliyah. A younger group, called Shomriyah (whose members helped found Kibbutz Ein Shemer), were leaders in the local branch. Its members attended a hakhsharah program near Sokolka, then the central training farm at Czenstochowa, and from there proceeded to Eretz Israel. There was also the Massada group, whose members were active in the Grodno district leadership (one of them, Mattityahu Shor, was a founder of Kibbutz Ein ha-Mifratz). Between 1935 and 1939, the Grodno branch numbered about 500 young people aged twelve to twenty, pupils of Tarbut and working youth. Educational activity was an important part of movement activity, with those aged sixteen to seventeen serving as group leaders for the thirteen and fourteen-year-olds.

Most of the members of the He-Halutz Organization of the Eretz Israel ha-Ovedet League were graduates of Ha-Shomer ha-Za'ir and Dror. The emphasis here was on Zionist-socialist education and on practical training for aliyah, together with work on behalf of the Zionist funds, distribution of shekalim for the Zionist Congresses, and activity in the Tarbut schools.

Betar focused on military education, although it did not scorn pioneering settlement (maintaining several work and training groups). Many of the movement's members reached Eretz Israel in a variety of ways, only a few by means of immigration certificates which they obtained as students or as professionals. They often immigrated illegally on the rickety ships of Aliyah Bet (illegal immigration to Palestine).

Besides the three large youth movements, smaller groups such as Akivah (General Zionists), which in the 1930s had some 150 members, most from the Polish high school and Tarbut counterpart, could be found in Grodno. The movement was divided into battalions, and its center was the Beit Ha'am (People's House) building. There was also the non-Zionist Zukunft (Future) movement run by the Bund, but, unlike the parent organization, it had little impact in Grodno.

Grodno Under Soviet Rule, 1939-1941

On September 1, 1939, under cover of the Russo-German Non-Aggression Pact, which had been signed a week earlier (August 23) and included an appendix to divide Poland between the two countries, Germany invaded Poland. At the same time, the Germans urged their Soviet ally to seize the area that it had been allocated under the terms of the agreement. The Soviet Union, surprised at the speed of the German advance and the crushing defeat of Poland, lost no time. On September 17, the Red Army crossed the border and within days had occupied all of eastern Poland.

According to another agreement (the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty of September 28), the border between the two countries followed a series of rivers: the Pissa, Narew, Bug and San. Within less than a month, western Byelorussia had been annexed to the Soviet Union within the framework of the Byelorussian Soviet Republic. Thousands of officials, journalists, teachers and administrative staff were brought from Russia to organize life in the newly occupied areas. The annexation process was rounded off by the adoption of the Citizenship Law, stipulating that everyone who was in the occupied areas on the day of the annexation was automatically considered a Soviet citizen, as were all those who arrived in the wake of the Soviet-German agreement by means of a population exchange (November 16, 1939). All other refugees, who belonged to neither of these categories, were also entitled to request Soviet citizenship.

The annexation was accompanied by the Sovietization of private property. Land, banks, factories, businesses, shops, and large workshops were nationalized. Heavy taxes were levied on small private businesses. Almost immediately the ruble was equalized to the zloty, a step that violated the status quo according to which the ruble was pegged at a lower value than the zloty. On December 31, 1939, the zloty was abolished, leaving the ruble as the sole legal tender. In the first weeks after their arrival, the representatives of the new government - officers and soldiers, officials, workers and others - went on a buying spree. Watches, pens, clothing, jewelry, shoes - everything was snapped up; the shelves were left empty. At the same time the authorities confiscated raw materials and entire warehouse stocks. There were many other changes as well: Poles were denied access to senior public-service positions; Russian and Byelorussian were made the official languages; the courts were overhauled; the churches were heavily taxed; and former senior officials and leading personalities were arrested, including police and army officers, judges, industrialists, landowners, bank officials, affluent merchants and other well-to-do Poles. The detainees were exiled to remote regions of Russia together with their families.

On the eve of these events, the Jews constituted 10 percent of the population of eastern Poland, but their share of the population in the cities was far higher. In the Bialystok district the Jews accounted for 38.4 percent of the population, and in Grodno - for 42.6 percent. Their intensive urbanization naturally meant that their social and economic structure was capitalistic in character. In the eyes of the new authorities, therefore, a large proportion of the Jews belonged to the capitalist class. As a result they were more vulnerable than other nationalities in eastern Poland to the new measures that stemmed from the Soviet economic system.

On the eve of World War II, the Jewish population of Grodno was approximately 25,000. This number remained stable despite the deportations by the Soviets, since the Jews deported into Russia were replaced by Jewish refugees who settled in Grodno.

The Red Army Enters Grodno. During the first three weeks of September 1939, before the Red Army entered the region, the entire Grodno area suffered from the Germans' aerial bombardments. Those affected the worst were the urban centers, as the Germans targeted industrial zones and railway lines. The Polish army fell apart, and its soldiers fled the front wounded, beaten, and broken in spirit. Utter confusion prevailed. Businesses shut down, and normal life came to a standstill.

The Jews suffered even more than the general population. They huddled in their homes and listened to the news on the radio. Some left the city during the bombing raids and made for nearby towns; Jews residing in the suburb sought shelter on the other side of the Nieman River, as the danger was greatest in their one-storey houses.

When the local government broke down, a menacing atmosphere could be felt among the Poles, as they believed that the Jews were confirmed admirers of the Russian Communist occupiers. The Poles took advantage of the few days between September 18 and 20, 1939, after the Polish forces had left Grodno but before the entry of the Russians, to perpetrate a large-scale pogrom in the city. However, a few prescient Jews had organized paramilitary units in order to maintain security and order and prevent vandalism and looting. Thus, in the residential suburb at the city's entrance a group of young Jews and Byelorussians (co-workers in a glass factory) banded together to disarm a gang of thugs from the Polish army. Another gang, which had organized when Grodno workers had freed political prisoners, decided to impose order in the city. Their leader, a member of the Polish judiciary named Mikulsky, gathered a lawless rabble around him, including policemen and members of the nationalistic organization OZN armed with rièes and pistols. They wandered through the city, stealing, looting, brutalizing, and killing the defenseless population. Their pogrom claimed twenty-çve fatalities.

The arrival of the Red Army on September 22, 1939, put an end to the anarchy, uncertainty, and lawless violence. The Jews greeted the Russian forces joyfully, viewing them as their saviors. Even Jews who wanted no part of either communism or socialism were grateful.

One local resident, Feigl Broide, expressed these feelings lucidly in a letter to her son, Abraham, in Palestine:

We are all alive, thank God, and the Red Army saved us from Polish hooligans. If the entry of the Red Army into Grodno had been delayed by even one day more, not a Jew would have been left alive. (Letter from Feigl Broide to her son, Abraham, in Eretz Israel, November 23, 1939, in the possession of Rahel Broide, Kefar Menahem.)

The Soviets, who were aware of the tension between Jews and Poles, endeavored to suppress the outbursts of antisemitism, which reached a peak on the eve of the Red Army's entry into Grodno on September 22, 1939. The principle that antisemitism was incompatible with the Soviet regime was backed up with deeds, and anti-Jewish violence was vigorously punished. In June 1940, the thirteen Grodno pogromists - among them Polish army officers, policemen, and members of anti-revolutionary organizations - were tried in a Soviet court. The ringleader, Mikulsky, escaped to Lithuania. Four of the defendants were sentenced to death; seven received prison terms of six to eight years; and two were released. The Jews felt that their lives were no longer dispensable and that they had as much government protection as the rest of the population. This new feeling of equality marked a considerable contrast to the atmosphere of hatred and threat that had prevailed during the Polish period. The Soviets also implemented a new employment policy that enabled many Jews to find jobs as civil servants; some served in the militia, and in one of Grodno`s quarters there was a Jewish police chief.

By comparison with the blatant, crass antisemitism of pre-war Poland, the Soviet regime seemed to its new Jewish subjects to be enlightened and fair, at least at first glance:

The Soviet army did not come as a conqueror and did not behave like one. The soldiers behaved courteously, the Jews among them did not hide their origin, but displayed an interest and a cordial attitude toward the [local] Jews and aroused their sympathy for the new regime.( Rivka Perlis, The Halutz Youth Movements in Nazi-Occupied Poland During the Holocaust (Ph.D. Thesis; Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1984, p. 55.)

Whatever apprehension the Jews may have had about the Soviets, it was negligible compared to their overpowering dread of the Nazi alternative, even though little was then known about the Nazis' atrocities in Germany and elsewhere.

However, to the Poles, in contrast to the Jews, the Soviet Union was a traditional enemy. They regarded the Red Army as an invading force that was determined to eradicate Polish independence in collusion with Nazi Germany. Indeed, the new regime took economic measures against the Poles and in many areas lowered their standard of living. Senior officials were removed from their posts, various groups were arrested and deported, and Russian replaced Polish as the official language. In short, the Poles loathed the annexation to the Soviet Union and dreamed of revenge.

The Jews' overt joy at the Red Army's arrival only aggravated the tension; to the Poles the Jews were, if not traitors, then collaborators with the hated new regime. The Poles' feeling of impotence, their frustration at being unable to express their feelings in deeds, for fear of the authorities, only deepened their hatred of the Jews, and they awaited a propitious moment to act. The Jews, sensing the threat which was gathering momentum below the surface, endeavored already then, when the Soviet regime was at the height of its power, to explain themselves to the surrounding population and to prepare for the future. (The future, indeed, would demonstrate that their fears were well founded. During the Nazi period the Jews faced danger not only from the occupier but also from the Polish population, whose reactions to the Germans' anti-Jewish actions ranged from studied indifference to Schadenfreude and informing on Jews to the authorities.)

Jewish Communal Life: Change and Adaptation.Two parallel processes marked the Jews' situation under the Soviet regime: on the one hand, it was an auspicious period for bettering oneself by acquiring an education, a profession, and general culture; but, at the same time, all Jewish aspects of life were expunged. While industrial enterprises benefited all the residents of the city and its surroundings, virtually everything distinctively Jewish was rooted out. General schools were opened, but the Hebrew school was shut down; public libraries flourished, but the Jewish library was closed. The Jewish youth movements were replaced by the Pioneers and the Komsomol (Communist Party youth organizations for children aged ten to fifteen and for those over fifteen, respectively). Only the theater was permitted to exist, but even that under the strict eye of the censors. In Grodno, where nearly half the population was Jewish, the eradication of the distinctively Jewish spheres of life was flagrant.

Communal and Religious Life. Naturally, the liquidation of the civil institutions and organizations resulted in the disbanding of the Va'ad ha- Kehillah, and all activity in Jewish social and welfare institutions was terminated. The Jewish charitable organizations, including the orphanage and the old-age home, ceased to exist; such institutions now had to cater to the general society. Every change in personal status (marriage, birth, death, etc.) had to be registered in the Department of Civil Operations (ZAGS). The staffs of the communal organizations were left idle and had to adjust to the new conditions and their deteriorating economic status. Even though in theory the Jewish religion is treated as the private affair of each individual, and if it remains within those parameters it is not persecuted,( The Holocaust of Polish Jewry (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1940) in practice the Jews were unable to observe the Sabbath, since Sunday was fixed as the official day of rest. Most of the Jews, who were now employed in the state economy, could not afford to lose part of their already miniscule wage or risk their superiors' wrath if they did not appear for work on Saturdays. At a later stage, absence from work for reasons other than illness would be punished by a fine and even arrest.

Although the synagogues were generally not shut down, they were taxed, and the entire responsibility for their upkeep was placed on the worshippers. Following the dissolution of the Va'ad ha-Kehillah, the synagogues assumed greater importance as a meeting place for observant Jews, and, when refugees began arriving from western and central Poland, they fulfilled a key organizational and relief function. As compared with other areas in which the Soviet authorities took a rigid approach, they were a bit more lenient in matters of religion; they allowed the observant some breathing space and refrained from making mass arrests among clerics.

Anti-religious propaganda was conducted mainly through the press. The newspaper Bialystoker Shtern in particular lashed out against Judaism and excoriated its nationalist character. In a lengthy article entitled Communism and Religion (June 1940), the paper attacked religion in general and the Jewish faith in particular. It contrasted reactionary, nonscientific Judaism with Communism, the fomentor of a new social order that educated people to help themselves instead of believing in divine deliverance. The paper would step up its anti-religious propaganda as the Jewish holidays approached, and especially before Passover and the High Holy Days. The Jews were called on to work as usual on these days and not to crowd around the exploitative rabbis and the well-heeled in the synagogues. The paper's general message, which ran like a thread through its pages, was the need to intensify the anti-religious campaign. Still, the scathing attacks on religion and the calls for a greater propaganda effort are indirect evidence that, despite all the difficulties, some Jews succeeded in observing commandments - attending synagogue, fasting on Yom Kippur, celebrating Passover - albeit with care not to attract attention. It must be emphasized, however, that only a small group of Jews remained loyal to their faith; most abandoned religion under the new circumstances.

Education and Culture. Owing to the chaos in the city, the schools did not reopen at the end of the summer vacation. However, because of the importance they attached to the educational system, the Soviets considered it urgent to reactivate the schools as soon as possible and adapt them to their system. As soon as the situation in Grodno stabilized, the Municipal Department for Popular Education (the Gorono) convened a meeting of all teachers of all nationalities from all the city's schools. They were addressed by the head of the department, a Jew from Minsk named Shapira (a shoemaker by trade), who explained the Soviet method of education that was to be introduced in Grodno.

Very soon words were translated into action. All the schools were converted into seven- or ten-grade institutions, or into technical schools, based on the Soviet system. The largest number of schools were Byelorussian, followed by the Russian schools, then the Polish, and finally a single Jewish school with ten grades. Clearly this did not correspond to the population distribution, since Jewish children constituted the overwhelming majority while Byelorussian pupils were a distinct minority. Thus there was practically no choice for Jewish parents but to send their children to the few Polish schools or to the Byelorussian schools, where the Byelorussian children from the neighboring villages studied (and their educational level was very low). The same pattern was repeated in the one Jewish high school, where the majority of the pupils and teachers had formerly been part of the secular-Zionist Tarbut system. The new curriculum was adapted to the Soviet format, and Yiddish rather than Hebrew became the language of instruction.

However, even the one Jewish high school was short-lived. The municipal department of education convened a meeting of parents who voluntarily decided to turn the school into a Russian one. Its new name was Russian Ten-Grade School No. 7. Gradually the teachers were replaced with others who came from Russia, and Christian pupils were placed in Jewish classes. Thus Yiddish-language instruction also came to an end.

In fact, the Jews' cooperation was illusory. Their vote in favor of a Russian high-school was prompted in no small measure by utilitarian considerations: they wanted their children to get ahead and knew that knowledge of Russian would open more doors. But even then there was criticism of the Jews' decision, and particularly of the teachers, this time because of the Yiddish aspect:

In Grodno, in the school of commerce, in which the teachers urged Yiddish (not knowing Russian), only 50 percent of the parents voted for instruction in Yiddish. It should be remembered that just yesterday these same parents were Zionists or Bundist Yiddishists.( Al Masuot (Hebrew), Merhavia, 1940, pp. 132-134)

This criticism concludes with the statement that the teachers in the Hebrew school failed in their duty. Perhaps they did not betray their Zionist faith, but they remained quiet and complacent and made not the slightest effort to keep the spark alive. Yet if the parents took a utilitarian approach, the teachers, too, had to adapt to the new situation. Indeed, there was no real choice, and the transition from Hebrew to Yiddish was the least of the evils.

The propaganda articles that appeared in the Bialystoker Shtern praise the Soviet educational system in Grodno profusely. Twenty-one elementary schools were established in the city, with Byelorussian the language of instruction in ten, Yiddish in five, and Polish and Russian in three each. According to the paper, the Jewish pupils in Junior High No. 16 were pleased at not having to learn unnecessary subjects. The paper was referring to the fact that the new curriculum, as an integral element of the Soviet system, abolished classes in the history of the Jewish people, Bible, and Judaism. The Yiddish language and its literature remained the final vestiges that differentiated the Jewish schools from the others.

The Jewish pupils themselves recalled this as a lively period. There were many sports activities and musical events, and parades were frequent; an inter-school Olympics was held, and the Pioneers and Komsomol were active. The Jewish teachers, though, had a different perspective. These teachers, and especially those from Galicia, who did not know Russian, worked hard, but became a caricature of the language. It is certain that in virtually no time they would have been replaced by teachers sent from the Russian interior, but [the Soviets] did not manage to effect this because the war [with Germany] erupted just as the school year ended.( Hersh Smolar, Jewish Life in Soviet Western Byelorussia 1939-1941 (Hebrew), Shevut 4 (1976), p. 134)Textbooks were also in short supply. The schools, now incorporated into the Soviet system, were not prepared for the hasty opening of the school year. The curriculum had undergone sweeping revisions and the textbooks had to be brought from the Soviet Union. A report in the Bialystok regional newspaper relates that textbooks in Polish and Yiddish were being printed in Kiev and that a large shipment was due soon in Bialystok and its surroundings - evidence that the problem was not only the language and the new subjects, but that there was also a shortage of teaching materials and, above all, textbooks.

To help cope with the expanded educational system and its innovations, special courses were held for teachers, and training was provided for new teachers. The Bialystok educational department held a series of courses in that city and in Grodno for teachers of geography, history, Byelorussian, Russian and others.

High-schoool graduates who so wished could proceed to university or vocational studies. The Soviet administration ensured that every student received a scholarship keyed to his grades, and the top pupils were exempt from tuition. The result was that in the Soviet-annexed areas, including Grodno, academic studies and vocational training assumed manic proportions. Courses were offered in quality-control, for railroad workers, drivers, and nurses. Colleges, seminars, a technical school, and a range of vocational high schools were opened. Many young men and women were sent to courses outside Grodno, usually in Bialystok. High-school graduates with good grades had no problem continuing their studies, such as in a pre-medical school opened at the initiative of the new government. All types of courses were available even to those with barely any education. (Zippora Lusovitz, who sold beer from the barrel, related: For that I took a course.) The feeling was that all doors were open to students. Even those who had been unable to study in the Polish period or had been compelled to break off their studies now had the opportunity to complete their schooling.

Press. All the Jewish papers were shut down within a day of the entry of the Soviet forces. Not a single Jewish paper remained in Grodno, and only one Yiddish paper based in Bialystok, the Bialystoker Shtern, was permitted to continue publishing. It covered all of western Byelorussia. This paper was actually the successor to Unser Leben, which had appeared in Bialystok since 1918, edited by Pesah Kaplan, but now it received Communist dressing. Because of the plethora of official material that the paper was obliged to publish, it became basically a translated version of the Byelorussian paper, with little space left for original material. (Still, it was in a better situation than the Polish paper, which was barred from printing any original material at all.) The reporters were in an awkward situation. They had limited options for creativity because of the slew of official items they had to print, yet they were constantly suspected of displaying excessive independence, as though they were involved in shaping Jewish public life. Eventually the paper was reduced in size. Besides the articles and reports against the Jewish religion, it reported widely on the party and its functionaries, elections, and the success of the Communist system in various regional towns. Reports about events at the front also appeared, but without commentary or attempts to draw conclusions. The paper was silent on the persecution of the Jews in the German-occupied areas.

Theater and Arts. The Soviet authorities considered the theater to be an effective propaganda vehicle. Consequently, the Yiddish theater was the only Jewish institution that was permitted to function, even enjoying government encouragement and financial support. Refugee actors and directors were very active in the theater. In Grodno a theater company called Baveglecher Yiddisher Melukhisher Teater (Wandering State Jewish Theater) operated under the direction of Morris Lampa. As its name suggests, the company was highly mobile and appeared in all the cities and towns of western Byelorussia - Slonim, Wolkowisk, Sokolka, Baranowicz, and others. One of its productions, Tuvia the Milkman, enjoyed great success and played to packed halls. A series of theater workshops was also established. I was astonished to see the number of tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, locksmiths, painters, closet-makers and other craftsmen, said Zvi Aviram,( Zvi Aviram, Episoden un Refleksen, Grodner Opklangen (Yiddish), September 1975.) who worked in the arts department.

Amateur arts were also developed. In the early summer of 1940, a festival of arts was held in Grodno. Jewish choirs from the health-spa town of Druskeniki and from the towns of Lunna and Amdur participated.

Grodno's Jews, like the city's other residents, enjoyed theater in other languages as well. The arts department invited a variety of groups from Moscow, Leningrad and Minsk, including theater and ballet companies, the Red Army Chorus, orchestras, a puppet theater, and many individual performers.

Libraries. As part of the re-education of the book-reading public, the authorities purged the libraries. First all the libraries were shut down so that their books could be screened. Books in Yiddish and Polish were vetted according to Soviet criteria, and publications that were found unsuitable - including, of course, everything in Hebrew - were removed. Approved books were transferred to general, state-run libraries. In Grodno, a supervisor from Minsk, working with two local members of the Communist Party, scrutinized all the libraries in town. They banned nearly all books written by Jews, permitting only the Polish classics and works by Mendele Mokher Seforim and Sholem Aleichem. All Hebrew books were purged. The Tarbut school

library, which contained 30,000 volumes in a variety of languages as well as many manuscripts, was a treasure house of the old and new culture. The librarian, Shmuel Ginzburg, sneaked into the library, stole the valuable volumes, and distributed them among the school's teachers and pupils for safekeeping until better times. Many books were indeed disqualified, and tens of thousands of volumes were turned into scrap paper. To fill the space on the shelves, Yiddish books were soon brought from the Soviet Union for the regional library in Bialystok, which also served Grodno.

Political and Zionist Activity. The members of the He-Halutz youth movements did not share the Jews' general delight at the arrival of the Red Army. To them the Soviets represented both an immediate threat to their organizational and ideological existence and a future threat to their plans to settle in Eretz Israel. The Soviet regime was known for its opposition to national movements overall and to Jewish national movements in particular. Hence the incisive saying that was often heard in the youth movements: Until now we were condemned to death, now our sentence has been converted to life imprisonment.( The Holocaust of Polish Jewry, op. cit., p. 34.)

In Grodno all activity came to a halt. The parties hid or burned their archives, and activists went into hiding. To ensure that they would not endanger the new regime by organizing resistance, the secret police arrested and, in some cases, exiled them. One of the victims of this policy was the Zionist activist Noah Bass, who was arrested by the NKVD, interrogated, and ordered not to engage in Zionist activity. Following his release, he was rearrested in June 1941, and placed on a train to Russia. The train was bombed, and he and his wife were killed. Chaim Snarsky from the Revisionists and other Betar movement activists were also arrested. The head of the local Ha-Shomer ha-Za'ir branch was summoned to the NKVD several times and was interrogated about the movement's activities and about friends of his who were undergoing hakhsharah training at Grodno.

Strangely enough, the first to be arrested were the leaders of the Bund. The Soviets had a lengthy account to settle with the Bund, whose members they viewed as servants of the reaction who do their work for the benefit of the capitalists. The Bund Party Committee sought cooperation with the new administration, but their leader, Leib Shifres, was arrested in October 1939, together with other Bundists. After five days of interrogation at the hands of the NKVD, they were incarcerated in Grodno prison. There Shifres was questioned about the CISHO school, about Bund activity, and about an ammunition dump that Bund members had allegedly prepared together with the PPS party in order to stage a revolt against the Red Army. The interrogator was, of course,a Communist, a woman who had fled to Russia from Poland and then entered Grodno with the Red Army.

Both the kibbutz and hakhsharah frameworks were eventually liquidated, but in the meantime continued to exist in the occupied zone.

The kibbutzim were those of Dror and three kibbutzim were Ha-Shomer ha-Za'ir, one of which, Ma'anit, was located in Grodno.

The kibbutzim did not hide their identity, and the authorities displayed some tolerance in their efforts to persuade their members to join the Communist camp, utilizing both propaganda techniques and promises of personal benefits. But their patience soon ran out; the kibbutzim were disbanded, and their members feared arrest. Some fled to free Vilna in order to establish a He-Halutz center there and in the hope of being able to reach Palestine; others went underground and confined their activity to transmitting information from the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) and learning Hebrew. The kibbutz of Ha-Shomer ha-Za'ir in Grodno, which initially had served as a haven for activists fleeing from the German occupation zone and as a way station for those bound for Vilna, was liquidated in November 1939. Its young members organized in underground cells of three or four individuals and met to hold periodic discussions.

Many members of Zionist youth movements joined the Komsomol and were active within it, even if this did not always stem from an inner conviction; indeed, in many cases, they were pressured to join. But an educational atmosphere prevailed, and the youngsters helped decide on the themes of the various activity groups and took part in organizing competitions. Those aged ten to fifteen were made to join the Pioneers, which met once a week; the members wore special ties and their shirts were decorated with symbols of various kinds.

Economic Developments and Employment Profile. The Sovietization of the economy affected the entire population. However, the Jewish communities in the large and medium-sized cities were more vulnerable because of their distinctive social and economic structure. In Grodno, the majority of the Jews were engaged in commerce, industry and crafts, or in the liberal professions. Some owned factories or small workshops.

First to be nationalized were industrial enterprises. Often a factory was nationalized together with its owner's home. Many of the dispossessed factory owners had no other choice but to leave Grodno and find a hiding place as well as a source of living somewhere else. Others were employed as workers in the factories they had once owned, and some were dismissed and arrested after a few weeks or months and sent to distant parts of Russia. Managers were brought from Russia for the large enterprises, such as the bicycle and tobacco factories, and additional clerks (also from Russia) and workers were taken on. The former factory owners received identity cards stamped Article 11, a code that restricted their freedom of movement. Nevertheless, besides those who were arrested and exiled, some escaped to Lvov, Slonim, Vilna and other places.

Initially, the new regime did not harass small businesses. On the contrary, such enterprises enjoyed something of a boom, albeit one that was both artificial and short-lived, as they were given until the end of 1939 to dispose of their remaining stock. Actually, this presented no problem, for, as we have noted above, immediately after the occupation the Russian soldiers went on a spending spree, buying whatever came to hand and without haggling about prices. Many stories sprang up around this buying binge. The local population was also seized by the mania and began hoarding. A popular quip at the time was: First you stand in line, and then you ask what's on sale. Within a few months the city experienced a shortage of clothing, footwear, and other basic items. As for the shopkeepers, although they got rid of their entire stock, and at a good price, a large part of their earnings went for the heavy taxes that were imposed to make their pockets lighter, and those who failed to buy rubles in time suffered drastic losses when the zloty was abolished as legal tender on December 31, 1939. At the end of 1939, all the merchants had to close down, since they could not renew their stock. Some had hidden goods in their home, for fear of remaining without a livelihood; if caught, they were tried and punished with imprisonment or exile.

The self-employed Jewish artisans, who constituted the majority of the craftsmen in Grodno, generally took the hints from above and began to organize in cooperatives and artels, an option that they preferred to factory work. The transition was gradual. Initially, because of the heavy taxes and the shortage of materials, they joined the existing cooperatives, but soon new artels were established in Grodno for shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, and barbers; most of the members were apparently Jewish.

An important source of employment was the state bureaucracy. Jews held clerking positions above their proportion of the population, but at the intermediate and lower levels. The senior positions in Grodno were reserved for Byelorussians, in accordance with the Byelorussification policy in the republic.

Jews were far less prominently represented in the teaching profession. Although, as we have described, the Soviets opened many schools and courses, and a variety of cultural institutions provided the intelligentsia with a livelihood, it was the Byelorussians who were preferred. This was even more flagrant than in other spheres, because they knew the language and because of the Byelorussification drive.

Most of the Jewish lawyers could no longer make a living because private law practices were prohibited. The old judicial system was replaced by people's courts based on the Soviet constitution, and only lawyers with a clean record (i.e., of proletarian extraction) were accepted in the new system. At the same time, the physicians' lot was somewhat improved, as they were now permitted to work, in contrast to the Polish period. However, they were absorbed into the state medical service and, from the beginning of 1940, were no longer permitted to engage in private practice. The Soviet regime's development of the health system generated a large demand for nurses, both male and female. Some of the self-employed pharmacists were also integrated into the state system following the nationalization of the pharmacies in December 1939. Jews also found work as engineers, a profession that was in growing demand.

Those who found employment as salaried workers soon discovered that in the Soviet regime wages were below the subsistence level. A worker made about 250 rubles a month at a time when the official prices of basic commodities were, for example, 1 ruble for a loaf of bread, 8 rubles per kilo of meat, 25 rubles for butter, and so forth. Clearly, such a salary was not enough for even basic items.

Some Jews drew on the help of relatives in the Soviet Union. Letters belonging to the Broide family indicate that their uncle sent them sweets and that when he visited he brought them food and electrical goods that were unobtainable in Grodno.

One of the most serious blows to the local population, including the Jews, was the authorities' confiscation of rooms and apartments in order to house the many experts who were brought in from the Soviet Union. These included the families of Red Army officers and civilians who were in charge of establishing the government offices. The result was that the city's population increased dramatically. The authorities seized flats with their furniture, or forced local residents to let part of their homes to lodgers. There was not a house in the city without a Russian family.

Some Jews were evicted for other reasons, such as the ban on residing in the industrial zone. Houses and flats larger than 50 sq. meters were confiscated and their owners ordered to find a residence 100 km. away, since Grodno was declared a border city. The lack of uniformity in the confiscation criteria and the authorities' arbitrary behavior generated considerable tension. Many Jews were affected by the confiscation of dwellings, since the majority belonged to the middle or upper-middle class and were concentrated in the urban areas, particularly in the city centers.

The Soviets brought with them new and different economic norms expressed in low wages, shortages in materials, rising prices, and a declining living standard. Nevertheless, most Jews were able to adapt to the new situation, found work, and earned enough to make ends meet. Quite a few Jews felt no substantial change, or thought that the Soviet socioeconomic order suited them, even though most had not previously been Communists. Indeed, the majority view was that the new situation was the best that could be hoped for under the circumstances: despite the shock of the new reality and the disappointment in the regime, there was no better alternative on the horizon.

Refugees. Immediately after overrunning western Poland, the Nazis began persecuting the Jews, and many fled eastward. The border with the Russian zone remained open for a brief period, until mid-October 1939. At the end of that year the Soviet authorities strictly forbade border crossings; the punishment was a three-year prison term.

Most estimates speak of about 200,000 refugees in the Soviet zone of occupation, or 25 percent of the total Jewish population. Grodno was inundated with about 4,000 Jewish refugees. Many of them were intellectuals - writers, theater personalities, musicians - but there were also some workers and craftsmen. Most regarded Grodno as a temporary haven, or a transit station on their way to Vilna, which was still free. The refugees filled the synagogues and the buildings of the Jewish public institutions; every Jewish home took in as many as possible. In the absence of organized assistance, the synagogue became the center of aid for the refugees. The local Jewish population cooked for them and assisted them with clothing and money. However, such aid was insufficient to maintain the refugees indefinitely; subsequently they became wards of the Soviet authorities, who acknowledged the need to provide them with work and housing.

In late 1939 or early 1940, refugee-aid committees, known as Kompobez (Komitet Pomoshchi Bezhentsam), were established in Grodno and other cities. Their purpose was to assist the refugees with food and clothing, while at the same time exploiting them for the economy and the security services. The committees were also in charge of registering the refugees for employment and for passports. However, as little work was available locally, the Soviets began sending refugees to the Russian interior, where workers were desperately needed. Many of them, particularly young people, but also professionals, shopkeepers, and even yeshivah students, willingly accepted the offer to work in Russia. The Bialystoker Shtern reported the departure of 1,500 refugees from Bialystok, Grodno, and Wolkowysk to work in Russian coal mines. Nevertheless, thousands of unemployed refugees still remained in the region. Moreover, some two months later, refugees began returning from Russia. One young man who returned to Grodno after working in the Urals complained that the Russians had not kept even one of their promises: the workers received neither humane living conditions nor suitable food; they had no theater or films. The work was backbreaking, the food was mostly a thin gruel, and no one had strength to work. Some sold their clothes in order to finance their return trip. Fleeing one's job was a crime, yet this deterred no one.

Despite the failures, Soviet propaganda described the refugees who had gone to Russia to work in a positive light. For instance, the Bialystoker Shtern published letters from some of the refugees. In a letter dated February 4, 1940, published under the title We Are Happy, refugees who had left in late December 1939 for work in Magnitogorsk in the Ural Mountains told about the excellent treatment they had received on the way, the warm reception upon their arrival, and the good conditions and leisure-time activities. Two similar letters appeared in the paper on February 22, 1940, one from the Caucasus and the other from Kovrov.

Many of the refugees who remained in the Soviet area of occupation tried to make a living from illegal commerce, including smuggling. As a result, the authorities began to view the refugees as hostile elements. Moreover, their interest in the German-occupied area and their attempts to make contact with relatives who remained there aroused the suspicions of the Soviet security authorities. In the spring of 1940, the Soviets began issuing identity cards. The refusal of more than half the refugees to become citizens, in the hope that they would eventually be able to return to their homes in German-occupied Poland, further rankled the authorities, and they classified these refugees as unreliable elements. To ensure beyond a doubt their loyalty to the regime, they were summoned to militia stations and were ordered to choose between Soviet citizenship or returning to German-occupied Poland. The majority, other than those who had a job and young students, opted to return. In June 1940, the authorities began arresting some of those refugees, usually in night sweeps, and transported them to Siberia or elsewhere in the northeastern Soviet Union. Probably more than 50 percent of the refugees wanted to return to Poland, and nearly all of them were deported. This would mean that about 2,000 of the refugees in Grodno were exiled to the Soviet Union.

Those who remained and found work became refugees a second time when war erupted between the Soviet Union and Germany. Some stayed and were murdered together with the local Jews, but others managed to escape into the Russian interior.