Excursion Heritage Research Observation Tour Virtual Tour Jewish Heritage Tours

There many options available on our Jewish Heritage Tours for exploring Western Ukraine‘s cemeteries, shtetls, synagogues, and Jewish cultural heritage sites including those in the cities and towns of Belz, Berezhany, Bolekhiv, Brody, Buchach, Chervonohrad, Dolyna, Drohobych, Hrymailiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kremenets, Pidhaitsi, Rozhniativ, Stryi, Ternopil, Velyki Mosty, Zhovkva [Zolkiew], Zolochiv [Zloczow] as well as Lviv.

LVIV

One must-see stop on our Jewish Heritage Tours is the Golden Rose Synagogue, known also as the Nachmanowicz Synagogue, or the Turei Zahav Synagogue, was the oldest synagogue in Ukraine. In 1941, the synagogue was desecrated, and in 1943 demolished by the Nazis.

There is a plaque commemorating the Golden Rose Synagogue: “Remnant of the old temple called Di Goldene Royz“. Built during 1580-1595 by the Nachmanowicz family in the memory of Nachmanowicz’s wife, the building was designed by the Italian architect Pablo Romano.

BELZ & CHERVONOHRAD

Another important stop in our Jewish Heritage Tours is the historical town of Belz, once part of the what the Kingdom of Poland in the 10th Century called Cherven Cities; Red Cities to the Poles or Red Ruthenia to the Varangian-led Kyiv Rus’.

In the late 17th Century, the Crown hetman Feliks Kazimierz Potocki purchased land along the Bug River establishing a town at the site he named Krystynopol after his wife, which would eventually become called Chervonohrad – which transliterates to English as “Red“.

The Ashkenazi Jewish community in Belz was established in 14th century,  The earliest known Jewish community there dates back to 1740. At the beginning of World War I, Belz had 6100 inhabitants, including 3600 Jews, 1600 Ukrainians, and 900 Poles. During the German and Soviet invasion of Poland, most of the Jewish population of Belz fled to the Soviet Union in Autumn of 1939. However, by May 1942, there were still over 1,540 local Jewish residents and refugees in Belz. On June 2, 1942, 1,000 Jews were deported to Hrubieszów and from there to the Sobibór concentration camp.

In 1931 the Jewish population in Chervonohrad was listed as 2,200. The Jewish cemetery there dates from 18th century with the last known Hasidic burial done in 1941.  With onset of World War II, the subsequent invasion of the town by German troops resulted in the Jewish residents of Chervonohrad being deported to the Belzec extermination camp by September, 1942.

BEREZHANY

The first written mention of Berezhany dates from 1374, when the village located in the what is now Western Ukraine‘s Ternopil Oblast was granted by the Governor of Galicia and Lodomeria Vladislaus II to Ruthenian boyar named Vas’ko Teptukhovych. Shortly afterwards, in the 14th century it became a part of Poland and became the property of a noble family from Buchach — members of House of Buczacki,

In 1530, King Sigismund I of Poland granted the village a city charter modelled on the Magdeburg Law. The document, among other privileges, granted the new town of Brzeżany, as it was called prior to 1945, to create a market place that would allow each and every tradesman, cart driver or businessman, regardless of his or her state, gender, faith or rite, to come to the town of Brzeżany for trade.

The town’s location on the route between Lviv and Terebovlya proved beneficial to the city’s growth and development. It soon started to attract settlers from all over Poland, including a large number of Jews, Ukrainians and Armenians. Because of its relative safety the town grew and by the end of the 17th century boasted a population of nearly 8,000 inhabitants which under Austrian rule grew to more than 10,000 by 1900.

Because of the outbreak of World War I and the internecine conflicts that followed, the town was passed back and forth between the Austrians, the Poles, the Russians, and ultimately the Soviets such that by 1939 Brzeżany’s Jewish population alone had grown to nearly 12,000, many of whom were refugees from German occupied territories further West. In December 1941, approximately 1,000 Jews were killed in the Lityatyn forest. On 12 June 1943 the Nazis murdered almost all the Jews from the Brzezany ghetto and the work camp at the local cemetery; only a few escaped.

BUCHACH

The earliest recorded mention of Buchach is in 1260 by Polish/Czech writer Bartosz Paprocki. In the late 14th century, Polish nobleman  Michał Awdaniec, became the owner of the town which had been experiencing a large influx of Polish, Jewish and Armenian settlers. Frequent invasions of the Crimean Tatars – which lasted intermittently until the mid 17th Century ultimately resulting in the entire provinces of Podolia and Eastern Galicia being transferred by treaty from the Poles to the Ottoman Empire.

In 1772, Eastern Galicia together with other areas of south-western Poland, became a part of Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria — a crownland of the Habsburg Monarchy as part of the First Partition of Poland. Buchach remained a part of Austria and its successor states until the end of the First World War in 1918. The town was briefly a part of the independent West Ukrainian People’s Republic before it was captured by the Republic of Poland in July 1919; occupied by the Red Army in 1920; then given back to Poland by treaty later that same year.

On September 18, 1939, during the Soviet Invasion of Poland, Buchach was again occupied by the Red Army, and incorporated into the SSR of Ukraine. Before World War II, approximately 10,000 Jews (half of the local population) lived in Buchach. According to the Soviet Extraordinary Commission, approximately 7,000 Jews were killed in Buchach during the Nazi occupation. Some were sent to Belzec, others murdered in the streets or in killing places in the forests. A few escaped to the Soviet Union or lived in the forests and fields. When Soviets retook the town on July 21, 1944, only about 100 Jewish survivors remained.

DROHOBYCH

Another seminal location on our Jewish Heritage Tours is Drohobych, founded at the end of eleventh century as an important trading post and transport node between Kyiv Rus’ and the lands to the West. After the town’s subsequent incorporation into of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia,  it began developing as a mercantile and saltworks centre. In the mid-nineteenth century it became Europe’s largest oil extraction center, which significantly contributed to its rapid development.

According to legend, there once was a settlement of chumaks – salt-traders – called Bych [Scourge]. When Bych was destroyed in a Cumanian raid, survivors rebuilt the settlement in a nearby location under its current name which means a Second Bych.

Pre-World War II Drohobych had a significant Jewish community of about 15,000 people, 40 % of the total population. Immediately after the Germans entered the city, Ukrainian nationalists started a pogrom, lasting for three days, supported by German military. In October 1942, Drohobych ghetto with approximately 10,000 people imprisoned was established, including Jews brought from in neighbouring localities. In June 1943, the Nazis liquidated the ghetto, and only 800 Jews form Drohobych survived.

STRYI

Stryi is located in Western Ukraine (formerly Eastern Galicia) about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of L’viv.

Stryi was first populated by Jews in the late 1500’s. The first synagogue was built in 1660. After Poland was partitioned, Stryi became part of the Austrian Empire in 1772, at which time there were about 440 Jewish families in the town and suburbs. After World War I, Stryi was part of the area that became a free and sovereign Poland. The town had a Jewish population of 10,988 in 1921 which grew to about 12,000 by 1939.

The Germans occupied Stryi on July 2, 1941, whereupon hundreds of Jews were immediately killed. In November 1941, 1,200 Jews were shot in the Holobotow Forest. Several deportations to extermination camps took place beginning in September 1942 and by late Summer of 1943 both the Stryi ghetto and labor camps near the town were liquidated. When the Soviet army occupied Stryi in August 1944 there were only a few Jewish survivors. Here is a link to a child survivor’s account of the massacre. No Jewish community has subsequently been re-established.

TEREBOVLIA [TREMBOWLA]

There are two former synagogues that are just a few minutes walk from the Terebovlia bus station, although it is hard to recognize them as such. One is now a music and art school while the other is a sports school. Although “synagogue” is a cognate and will be understood by Ukrainians, most locals do not know that these buildings are former synagogues.

Before World War II, approximately 1,486 of Terebovlia‘s population were Jewish. During the German occupation, the majority of the Jewish population were kept in a small ghetto, and around 1,100 were shot on April 7, 1943 close to the nearby village of Plebanivka. To read survivors accounts of the slaughter visit the Trembowla Memorial Book website. A current monument stands next to two gravestones–the old Jewish cemetery no longer exists.

TERNOPIL

Polish Jews settled in Ternopil [Tarnopol] beginning at its founding and soon formed a majority of the population. During the 16th and 17th centuries there were 300 Jewish families in the city. The Great Synagogue of Tarnopol was built in Gothic Survival style between 1622 and 1628.  As of 1905, the Jewish community numbered 14,000 out of a total population in the city of 30,415. Jews took control of the active import/export trade with Russia conducted through the border city of Pidvolochysk.

According to Polish census of 1931, Jews constituted 44% of the city of Tarnopol [Ternopil] diverse multicultural population estimated to be 18,500 at the time of the Soviet Union’s invasion in 1939, with the majority of Jews speaking Polish as their native language. On 2 July 1941, the city was occupied by the Nazis who whereupon led a Jewish pogrom, and continued to isolate the Jewish population by creating the Tarnopol Ghetto.

In the winter of 1941–42, the death rate in the ghetto escalated to such a degree that the Judenrat was forced to bury the dead in a common grave. Between August 1942 to June 1943 there were a number of deportations among them one on 10 November 1942 during which some 2,500 Jews were rounded up and marched to the station, with a small Ukrainian orchestra playing on their departure to Belzec extermination camp. A few hundred Jews from Tarnopol and its vicinity attempted to survive by hiding within the town limits and a number of Jews survived by hiding with the Poles.

A monument in memory of the Holocaust victims was built at Petrikovsky Yar in 1996.

VELYKI MOSTY

Velyki Mosty [Mostie Wilkia in Hebrew] is a city in Sokal Raion of Lviv Oblast in Western Ukraine. The village itself was established in 1472, and was part of Belz Voivodeship of Red Ruthenia under Polish rule until the late 18th Century when the town became part of Austrian Galicia.

In the 1930s, about 1,200 Jews lived in Mostie Wilkia representing between one-third and one-half of it total population at the time. In September 1939, the Germans first entered Mostie Wilkia, and during the ten days they held it burned down a synagogue and a number of  Jewish houses. Following the withdrawal of the Germans following the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, the town was occupied by the Soviets who set about nationalizing the Jewish factories and estates and began deporting Jewish refugees from Western Poland to gulags in the East.

The Germans reoccupied the town in 1941, and almost immediately began a campaign of repression aimed at its Jewish population eventually forcing those remaining into a ghetto.  By end of 1942 the population of the ghetto was nearly 4,000 swelled by an influx of refugees from neighboring towns.  It was then that the Germans began a program to deplete the ghetto population by deporting groups to labor camps in Sokal and Złoczów.

In early 1943 the ghetto liquidation action began, German and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police surrounded the ghetto, took the Jews out of their homes and led them to a nearby forest, where they were shot dead. The next day, about half of the mass grave workers were also shot in the labor camp; the number killed in this action was about 2,000, most of them women and elderly. The camp was liquidated on May 10, 1943; most of the workers were murdered, and the rest were sent to the Janowska Concentration Camp in Lviv.

ZOLKIEW [ZHOVKVA]

A village named Winniki was mentioned at the site in 1368 and was part of the Kingdom of Poland under the Piast dynasty. The town was founded in 1597 as a private fortified town and named Żółkiew after its founder, hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski. As a private town of Poland, Żółkiew was the property of the aristocracy – sequentially the Żółkiewski, Daniłowicz, Sobieski and Radziwiłł families. During this period, most of the city’s landmarks were built, including the Zhovkva Castle and St. Lawrence’s Church.

From the First Partition of Poland in 1772 until 1918, the town was part of the Austrian monarchy’s province of Eastern Galicia [now Western Ukraine]. The town came under Polish control in May 1919, seven months after the re-establishment of independent Poland, confirmed by the Paris Peace Conference in June 1919 and the Peace of Riga in 1921. In 1939, following the Soviet invasion of Poland, Żółkiew, together with the rest of Poland’s Kresy Wschodnie, was occupied by the Soviet Union until 1941 when the Nazis invaded and controlled the town until 1944.

Few Jews survived the Zolkiew Holocaust out of the 4,500 – nearly half the the city’s population – who lived in there before World War II.  In 1942, Germans deported 3,200 Jews to the Belzec extermination camp. Many others were killed by Germans in the vicinity of the city, and the rest were taken to the Janowska Concentration Camp. The synagogue [see image] was blown up by the Nazis in 1941, leaving only its outside walls. In 2000, the building was declared one of the world’s most endangered sites by the World Monuments Fund. A restoration campaign began in 2001, supported by WMF’s Jewish Heritage Program and other sources, which is ongoing.

See our Virtual Tours of Western Ukraine page for links to online resources for researching your Jewish Heritage.

You can view a video clip from our Jewish Heritage Tour of Lviv from 2019.