• Gesher Galicia, the special interest group for Galician Jewish family history
• Beth-Hatefutsoth: Museum of the Jewish People
• Poland's gift to America, 1926.

The shtetl of Kopyczynce was one of 235 school districts represented in Vols 14-109 of the 111 volumes celebrating the 150th anniversary of American independence.
• Kopyczynce" - Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland

Holocaust Research Resources

• United States Holocaust Museum -- Information on Kopychintsy
• Naczelna Dyrekcja Archiwow Panstwowych, ul. Dluga 6, Skr.Pocztawa Nr1005, 00-950 Warszawa, Poland
• CHRONICLE OF DESTRUCTION (1941-1944) by Abraham Becker, translated by Max Mermelstein. The chronicle is  based on notes expanded upon while Becker was being hidden by Christians in Kopychyntse (sic) following the destruction of the town's ghetto,during the 2nd half of July 1943. Becker was in Kopychyntse from the last days of the Soviet occupation through the entire German occupation.

The Judenrat

The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe, the "Judenrat", were created by Nazi authorities to provide "local leadership" in pre-1939 Poland, the Baltic countries, and the occupied areas of Byelorussia and the Ukraine. Isaiah Trunk examined the emergence of various Councils and reported his findings in "Judenrat; The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation." 1978, New York: The Macmillan Company. On p. 362, Trunk reports that during a forced evacuation from the Bialystok Ghetto to Pruzana (September & October 1941), some Council employees were accused of accepting bribes to not include persons in the lists of candidates for evacuation. Frauds perpetrated by some of the employees were reported from Kaunas, Lublin, Lwow, Zamosc, Belchatow, Klementow, Kopyczynce and other ghettos. Unfortunately, most information preserved about the operation of the Councils was negative; little information exists about those men of high integrity and moral standing.

Jews of the Dnieper Valley

In the period 7th - 3rd Century BCE, Dniester River (Tiras) flowed into the Black Sea. The Dnieper River (Borysthenes).

Jews have lived in Eastern Galicia since the 14th Century. The most significant rise in their numbers occurred during the 19th Century as a result of both a high birth rate and flight from pogroms in the Russian Empire. In 1850, there were 449,000 Jews throughout all of Galicia. By 1910, the numbers almost doubled to 872,000; three-quarters of them---660,000---lived in Eastern Galicia, of whom as high as 76.2% resided in cities and small towns. Jews were also found in towns and small cities of Bokovina, 76,000 (44.7% of the total population) and in Transcarpathia, 87,000 (14.5%).

Jews came to the Ukrainian region when it was still part of the Polish Kingdom in the late 16th Century. Jews tended to live in cities and towns located west of the line known as the Pale of Settlement...the former lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth beyond which they were forbidden to reside.

The ethnic composition of the Dnieper Ukraine (1897) included 1,927,000 Jews, 8.2% of the total population---the 2nd largest minority after the Russians. Ethnic Ukrainians tended to live in the countryside and minority populations in urban areas. Thus, in 1897, as high as 70% of the Dnieper Ukraine’s urban dwellers were ethnically non-Ukrainian. Over 70% of Jews inhabited places with more than 1000 inhabitants; 26% lived in 20 cities---their numbers concentrated on the Right Bank, where 61% of all of them lived, averaging 12.6% of the population in each of the four provinces there: Volkynia, Kiev, Podalia, Kherson. The Right Bank was also home for about all the Poles living in Dnieper Ukraine. In 1910, in Austro-Hungary, 823,000 Jews (12.7%), with Poles, Jews & Germans as the largest minorities.

Historical Comments

Kopyczynce Society

The First Kopyczynzer Sick & Benevolent Society was founded in New York in 1895 by immigrants from Kopychintsy. The society was also known as Erste Kopyczyner Kranken Untershtitsung Verein. YIVO Record Group 970 contains cemetery records, correspondence and a Seal. The Society was dissolved in the 1970's

CHRONICLE OF DESTRUCTION. ABRAHAM BECKER Translated by Max Mermelstein.  (Permission of Norman W.Ginsberg.)

This chronicle is based on Becker's notes while in Kopychintse (sp) following the liquidation of the ghetto during the second half of July 1943. Hiding in the same bunker were Sabina (Bincia) Hahn, a biology student at University of Lvov, Moshe Rothman, sympathizer of the orthodox "Agudat Israel" party, and a young refugee from Zaleshchyke.

Saturday, July 5, 1941,  the Germans occupy Chortkov  (Czortkow, Pol.) then onwards to
Husiatyn (Gusyatin, Pol.) on Zbruch R. where about 200 jewish males, 10-yrs old and older
were killed  Over a period of three days, fathers buried their children and children buried their
fathers. At this time, the Germans torched the famous, 17th C. synagogue which had been built
in the Renaissance style.

Sunday July 6, 1941, 3:00pm, German tanks enter Kopychyntse greeted festively by Ukrainian men and women..

Saturday, November 8, 1941, 200 men are delivered to labor camps at Tarnopol and Kamionka near Podvolochysk; 25 men sent there December 1941.

February 20, 1942, 24 sent to the labor camp at Borki Wielkie on the Tarnopol-Podovolchysk railroad, 20 more sent on Friday March 6, 1942.

March 20, 150 sent to Chortkov; of these, 100 were sent to Kamionka and 50  to Hlubochek.. In May, 1942, 50 girls were rounded up and sent to Yagelnitza.

June, 1942, men sent to Stupki.

July 17, 1942 34 Jews shipped to Hlubochek ( almost all died there).

Wednesday, September 30, 1942, 1100 shipped to gas chambers of Belzec, no one returned from there.

Belzec (Polish), Belzhets (Russian) was a village in Lublin province, SE Poland, on the railroad, 5 miles S of Tomaszow Lubelski. Belzec was one of three extermination camps constituting Aktion Reinhard. Information on these camps can be found in the book:

"Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: the Operation Reinhard death camps."
Arad, Yitzhak  (1926-)    Bloomington,Indiana Univ. Press, 1987.

February 1943, 60 were sent to Hlubochek.

Thursday April 15, between 400 and 600 were forced to undress and, while kneeling, were shot and buried in a mass grave. In 1943, the Germans set fire to the camps around Tarnopol, killing all the inmates. At Kamionka, about 4000 Jews from Chortkov and surrounding towns were forced to dig ditches and were shot.  As other Jewish communities were decimated, the remaining populations were brought into the ghetto.

By June 1943, with Jews from surrounding towns entering Kopychintse, the number of Jews in the ghetto exceeded 5000. On  June 3, 2700 Jews from Buchah who had been brought into the ghetto were executed. Almost daily after that, Jews were murdered until less than 1000 remained. Of these, 400  were moved to Chortov where almost all perished. The final liquidation of Jews began July 20, 1943.

March 22, 1944, the Red Army re-captured Kopychyntse and were greeted by a handful of survivors. Becker comments on the humane and courageous attitudes of those few Gentiles who helped some Jews to survive.
 

This page was initially created by Norman Greenfeld on Dec 21, 1998
Please send any comments to Norman Greenfeld     (ngreenf1@nycap.rr.com) 

Last Updated by Norman Greenfeld: March 14, 2000
(editted by J Berman on January 03 2001)

Copyright © 2000, Norman Greenfeld