Ivje is a small town in Ivje region on the river Ivjyanka, located 158 kilometers from Grodno and ten kilometres from the railway station at Gauya. Population: 8,600 people in 1995.

Ivye was first mentioned in the Chronicles in the fifteenth century as a Grand Duchal residence. The Grand Duke of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Kazimir, gave it to the Governor of Novogrudok, Petr Mantygerdovich, who established a Catholic church in 1495. In the first half of the sixteenth century, it belonged to Duke Zaberezinski. In 1551, Ivye was a mestechko in Oshmyany povet. From 1558 to 1654, Ivye belonged to Kishki. In the second half of the sixteenth century, Ivye was one of the centers of Oriyanstvo district in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with a school and a book-printing house. The director of the school in 1585-1593 was Y. L. Namyslovski. In 1598, there were two taverns and 129 houses of which nineteen were given to Tatars in the territory outside of Ivje.

Jews first settled in Ivye in the early 1600 s. The town is mentioned in the records of the Lithuanian Council (Councils of the Lands) tax records.  A Moses from I. is named as taxpayer in the Pinkas of the Lithuanian Council in 1623.  The community paid a poll tax for its members directly to the Council, and was thus independent of all 5 of the leading Communities of Lithuania.  The Jewish community was involved primarily in innkeeping, brandy distillation, estate leases, and dairies. In 1630, Kishka gave Petropavlovskya Catholic Church to the Bernandinski Order. At the same time, a wooden Catholic church was built there. There was a school, a hospital, and a library belonging to the Catholic chuch. In 1634, the mestechko consisted of a market place and three streets with 180 houses.

In the middle of seventeenth century until the first half of the nineteenth century, owners of Ivye were Sluzhka, Glebovich, Zhizhemski, Oginski, Sapega, and Tezengauz.  In 1761 the Jews paid [along with the Association of Jews in Lipniski] 600 Gulden to the Council in Sltutzk.  In 1795, Russian Empire control began. Beginning in 1843, Ivye belonged to Duke Zamoiski. The 1847 Jewish population was 804. In 1891, when a fire damaged over one hundred Jewish homes, many Jews moved elsewhere. In 1897, it was a volostj center in Oshmyany povet of Vilno gubernya with 2,828 people, 387 houses, a Catholic church, two synagogue, three Jewish prayer houses, a technical school, a pharmacy, one mill, seventeen shops, four taverns, and five annual fairs. The 1897 Jewish population was 573 (15.7% of the population).

In 1915, the Red Army and the Polish Army occupied Ivye. In 1921-1939, it belonged to Poland as a mestechko center of the gmina in Volozhin povet in Novogrudok voevodstvo. In 1921, under Polish rule, the Jewish population increased to 2,100 or about 76% of the population. At that time, the town also had a Tarbut school and a Jewish female elementary school. In 1928, Iwye was a mezteczko (small city) and gmina wiejska (parish town) and seat of the community council for the surrounding villages, in the first uchastok, Lida powiat, Nowogrodskie woj., Poland. The Justice of the Peace was in Ivye and the Justice Court in Wilno. The 1928 miasteczko population was 2,731. The railway station was five kilometers away (a train stop for limited transports) on the Gawja-Iwje line. The post office, telegraph and telephone were in Iwje k. Lidy. Iwje had one Catholic church, a Merchants Association, an Artisans Association, mills, and tanneries. Markets were on Wednesdays.

The USSR, who ruled the town from 1939 to 1941, dissolved Jewish commuity institutions and outlawed Zionist activity. The Tarbut school became a Yiddish state school. Conscription into the Red Army was enforced on June 22, 1941. Beginning in 1939, Ivye belonged to BSSR. On January 15, 1940, Ivye became a small town and regional center. The Beginning June 29, 1941 until July 8 1944, the Nazis occupied the town and killed more than the 2,621 people in Ivje and the environs reported by the Belarussians. On the ninth of Av, about 225 Jewish intellectuals were murdered. A ghetto was enforced in September of 1941. On May 12, an aktion murdered about 2,500 of the Jewish residents. Contact with partisans in the adjacent forests began. One group joined Tuviah Bielski. The murders continued in the town until January 20, 1943 when the remaining 1,100 Jews were moved to Borisov where they perished. The Jewish community was not reconstituted following WWII.

In 1971, there were 5,000 people, a bakery, a cannery, forestry operations, a secondary school, a music school, a sports school, a youth center, four kindergartens, a house of culture , two libraries, and a hospital. There are monuments to the victims of fascism (Nazis). Architectural monuments: Petropavlovskaya Catholic Church (the end of 15-17 century), a mosque (1884) which still exists, and an Orthodox church. (Sachenka, vol. 3, p.510)

From:  Orgelbrand-Encyklopedia General, Volume XII, , page 742, Warsaw, 1863:

First some definitions of terms used:
Podskarbi - royal clerk responsible for a medieval king's treasury; after 16th century, a title equivalent to "the honorable"
Dekanat - district of ten parishes in the Catholic Church organizational structure
Drewniane miasteczko - little wooden country town, not large city, in which houses were built of wood
Voivod - local ruler or governor

Iwye, a drewniane miasteczko in former Vilna province, administrative district Oszmiana, 7mil from Oszmiana and from Lida was the former property of the Kiszka family. Mikolaj Kiszka, from Ciechanowiec, Great Lithuania, was "castellan" in Troki and podskarbi . Before 1538, Bernardine monks settled here and "provided by" or "providing to" the church indispensable funds. About 1611, a Calvinist community was founded here. At present [1863], Iwye is country town and the property of the Tyzenhauz family.
translation thanks to Paul Pilawa

From  Geographical Dictionary of Polish Kingdom, Volume III, Warsaw 1882, page 325:
   Iwye was a country town in the administrative district Oszmiana. Geographical location: "53 56 widths north and 43 26 east lengths", situated 59 versts south of Oszmiana and 134 versts from Vilna, at 514 of feet above sea level.
   Iwye is a country-commune management center with a country-school, the brick Catholic parish church of Sts. Piotr and Pawel, and a post office that communicates with the Lida post in via the post office in Dzilkowicze, about 29.5 versts distant. Country town had 2,123 inhabitants (1,053 men and 1,070 women) in 1869. The country-commune was divided into 5 districts with 42 villages, 978 houses, and 6,243 peasants. The Catholic Parish (1st class -?) belongs to the dekanat  in Wiszniewo that possesses Duda and the chapels in Satoltowicze with 7,646 faithful. Iwye was once the property of
the Kiszka family. Mikolaj from Czechanowiec, voivode of Mscilaw province and leader in Wilkoszewo, founded a church here in 1631. The church was built as a cloister; and he brought Bernadine monks to it. His maintenance of the
cloister cost 2,000 rallies a year (part of income from the estates). This gift occurred on 10 of June 1633. The Bernardine monks had a library containing 489 books of theological content, a cloister nursery school, and a monastic school called "rhetoric". The school began in the nineteenth century.
   The Sluzka family bought the country town Iwye from the Kiszka family. They received this from Katarzyna Januszowa of the House of Kiszka, the wife of the Lithuanian hetman. In a testament, Katarzyna was recorded in Iwye in 1662 as Karol and Katarzyna from Radziwill Hlebowicz. Karol and Katarzyna Hlebowicz had two daughters:
1. Marcybele(?), wife of Marcyan Oginski, of Troki voivode and Lithuanian chancellor
2. Krystyna, wife of Sapieha, of voivode Polock
When Marcybele Oginski died without progeny, the Sapieha family received the country town of Iwye. In 1686, the Sapieha family returned Iwye as a deposit to the Tyzenhauz family. Today [1882], Iwye belongs to countesses Elfryda
Zamojski, who received it in the fall of the Tyzenhauz family.
Translation thanks to Jan Sekta

A smoother translation can be found on the PGSA website

From BALINSKI, LIPINSKI: ANCIENT POLISH  Volume IV, page 187, Warsaw 1887:
Ivye - wooden country town about miles 7 from Oszmiana and from Lida, formerly belonging to the Kiszkow family. Mikolaj Kiszk from Ciechanowiec, castellan [?] from Troki and podskarbi  of Great Lithuanian before 1538 founded a
Bernardine monastery here . In 1631, he funded the church. About 1611, someone from the Kiszka family founded the Iwye Calvinist Protestant community. This country town finally became the property of the Tyzenhauz family.

Iwje should not be confused with Jewe, in Tro province, on the road from Vilna to Kaunas.
Translation thanks to Jan Sekta

Sources:
Ksiega Adresowa Handlowa, Warszawa Bydgoszcz 1929
Sachenka, B.I. [editor], Encyclopedia of the History of Belarus. Minsk: 1996. Volume 3, p. 510.
Encyclopedia Judaica, vol 3., Berlin: 1931.

Sources for further research:

• Encyclopedia Judaica; Dubnow, S. Pinchas ha-Medinah (1925); Kaganowitz, M. (editor),
• Yizkor book: Sefer Zikkaron li-Kehillat Ivye (H/Y), 1968;
• 1929 Polish Business Directory: Ksiega Adresowa Polski; Slownik Geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego
• Yad Vashem: 7310, Hebrew, 1 Mar 1973, KAPLAN, Yosef: Jews of Lida under Soviet rule; members of the Judenrat (with names); German workers Werner, Windisch an Hannweg; residents of the neighborhood, WASILISKI, IWJE, WORONOW in the Lida ghetto; failed escapes; escape of the couple Kaplan and their joining the Soviet partisan group Iskra; sabotage and battles
• Yad Vashem: p. 18 224540 Yiddish, 11 Aug 1947, Statistical data on the extermination of Jews in 1942 in various communities: LIDA, IVJE, WASILIZHKI, DOLHINOW and others

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