Bielsk Podlaski
Bielsk Podlaski, Poland, has a long Jewish history.
This site
connects you with that history through first-person accounts,
Holocaust testimonies, family histories, and photographs. It
also contains links to archival
materials, encyclopedic works, and other resources
pertaining to Bielsk Podlaski and to Jewish life in Poland.
This site can help you learn more about how your ancestors
lived, and perhaps help you discover names or photos of
relatives. A significant portion of this material has been
shared or translated by others with ties to Bielsk. If you
have photos, documents, stories or materials related to Bielsk
Podlaski that you would like to share, or if you find any
errors, please email the coordinator.
Przeczytaj
tę stronę po polsku Читайте цей сайт українською Читать
этот
сайт на русском языке
This site is
hosted at no cost by JewishGen, Inc., the Home of Jewish
Genealogy. If you have been aided in your research by this
site and wish to further our mission of preserving our history
for future generations, your JewishGen-erosity is greatly
appreciated.
Support the Bielsk
Podlaski Yizkor Book Translation Project
See
the current progress of the translation project
Yizkor Book
The memorial book of the Jews from
Bielsk Podlaski (in Polish: księga pamięci Żydów Bielska
Podlaskiego) is titled Book in the Holy Memory of the
Bielsk Podliask Jews Whose Lives Were Taken During the
Holocaust Between 1939 and 1944. Through it, survivors
and their families speak about the history of the town, what
life there was like, its people, and their fate. The book
contains a brief section in English, along with more
extensive Hebrew and Yiddish sections. The complete Yiddish
section has been translated to English, and the Hebrew
section is in the process of being translated. Many of the
Hebrew chapters have been completed. Please click here to
read about the Bielsk Podlaski Yizkor Book
Translation Project.
- The table
of contents provides access to the complete English
section, the Hebrew and Yiddish chapters that have been
translated into English, and a necrology of over 1,100
names.
- A scan of
the English section of the Bielsk memorial book, with fully
searchable text, can be downloaded in PDF format (44 MB).
- To view a
scan of the entire book, including the English, Hebrew, and
Yiddish sections, download it from the Yiddish Book Center, which also offers reprints.
- Use Google
Translate to read the English translations in other
languages (works best in Google Chrome):
- Polski - Kliknij tutaj, aby skorzystać z
Tłumacza Google i przeczytać przetłumaczone przez
JewishGen księgi pamiątkowe Żydów z Bielska Podlaskiego na
język polski (Księga Świętej Pamięci Żydów z Bielska
Podlaskiego, których życie zostało odebrane podczas
Holokaustu w latach 1939-1944). Księga pamięci Żydów
Bielska Podlaskiego. Działa najlepiej w Google Chrome.
- русский - Нажмите
здесь,
чтобы использовать Google Translate, чтобы прочитать переводы JewishGen мемориальной книги евреев из Бельска-Подляского на русский язык (Книга святой памяти евреев Бельского Подляска, чьи жизни были отняты во время Холокоста между 1939 и 1944 годами). Лучше всего работает в Google
Chrome.
- Українська
- Клацніть
тут, щоб скористатися Google Translate, щоб
прочитати переклад JewishGen меморіальної книги євреїв з
Більська Підляського українською мовою (Книга святої
пам’яті євреїв Більська Підляського, чиї життя були
забрані під час Голокосту між 1939 і 1944 роками).
Найкраще працює в Google Chrome.
Families and People
Family
histories
contain unique stories, perspectives, documents, and
photographs of people and life in Bielsk. They are presented
here as a way of supplementing the Yizkor book. If you would
like to add your family history, please contact the coordinator.
History and Background
- Bielsk Podlaski in the Sources
and the Book of Bielsk: an Historical Survey, by Haim Rabin
- Bielsk in the Encyclopedia of
Jewish Communities in Poland (Pinkas Hakehillot Polin)
- Shabbot in a Small Town (Bielsk)
in Russia Before the First World War, by I. Semiat
- The Jewish School in Bielsk and
Like Children to Their Mother by Libe Utzyski
- Image of a Society, Kehila and
Rabbinate, and Opinions Views and Ideological Movements, by H. Rabin
- An Introduction to Bielsk, by Mark W. Gordon
- Entries in
the early 1900s Jewish Encyclopedia and the 2007 Encyclopedia Judaica
- Details
about the Case of Blood Libel in Bielsk (a chapter in the Yizkor book) are
found in the Jewish Encyclopedia
- A brief History of Bielsk
- Letters
to Herbert Hoover
from the children of the Second Jewish Kitchen in Bielsk,
Jewish Orphanage No. 4, and Jewish Kitchen No. 4 in
Siemiatycze
- The Bielsker Bruderlicher
Unterstitzungs Verein (BBUV, translated as Bielsker
Brotherly Assistance Society) was a mutual aid society
founded in 1888 in New York by people from Bielsk Podlaski
and surrounding areas. Materials available include a
membership directory, incorporation papers, souvenir
journals, and a scrollable list of over 800 names
in the 1928 journal. The souvenir journals are a testament
to the rich social activities of the BBUV.
Holocaust
- Bielsk
Podlaski Ghetto contains information including
first-person accounts and Holocaust testimonies,
photographs, encyclopedic entries, and maps of the ghetto
with the location of historic Jewish sites.
- Opinions Views and Ideological
Movements, by
Haim Rabin.
- An Unchosen People: Jewish Political
Reckoning in Interwar Poland, by Kenneth B. Moss. “At
the center of this book was a young man from the eastern
Polish town of Bielsk Podlaski who wrote [an autobiography]
under the pseudonym Binyomen Rotberg.” “Well before the
Holocaust, Moss demonstrates, Polish fascism and
antisemitism had bankrupted every extant Jewish political
ideology—from Communism to Zionism to liberalism to
religious Orthodoxy—leaving Polish Jews a futureless people
as they entered the fateful era of war and genocide.” Google
Books offers a free preview.
Book reviews can be read here and here. Rotberg's
handwritten Yiddish autobiography can be read online at the
Center for Jewish
History website.
- “Jews
in Bielsk Podlaski County, 1939-1945,” is a chapter in Night
Without End, The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland,
released in September 2022 and reviewed
here. Google Books provides a preview making the
entire chapter, along with the book’s preface, available to
read
online for free. The chapter on Bielsk Podlaski County
is written by Barbara Engelking, co-editor of the
book with Jan Grabowski. Engelking has been
in the news because of criticism from the Polish
government over comments she made in a TV interview marking
the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April
19, 2023) about the treatment of Jews by Poland and Poles
during the Holocaust.
- 20 years before the
Holocaust, pogroms killed 100,000 Jews – then were
forgotten. ‘In the Midst of Civilized Europe’ by
Jeffrey Veidlinger revisits the brutal violence in 1918-1921
that portended a genocide of Europe’s Jews, and was soon
overshadowed by it. A presentation by the author can be heard
here.
- The Attitudes of the Poles
Toward the Jews, an excerpt
from the memoir by Calel Perechodnik, Am I A Murderer?
Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman, is available
on the Jewish Virtual Library. Further information about
this memoir can be found on YadVashem here and here, and on the USHMM.
- The Polish Police: Collaboration
in the Holocaust (PDF), by Jan Grabowski, on the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- The Holocaust in Poland on Wikipedia
- The
German Invasion of Poland, 1939
- Shtetl, on PBS Frontline, "tells the
homecoming story of two elderly Polish-American Jews who
return to their families’ shtetl in Bransk [near Bielsk
Podlaski], Poland, where 2,500 Jews lived before most were
sent to Treblinka’s gas chambers." The site includes the
entire three-hour documentary, information about Treblinka,
and other resources. PBS also provides an educator's primer,
classroom activities, a timeline, and maps for use in the
classroom in conjunction with the documentary.
- Oral
histories, photographs, and other materials related to the
Holocaust and Bielsk can be found on the website of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This
link will provide search results on the term Bielsk
Podlaski. This link will provide search
results from their collection using the word Bielsk.
- This article
about the 1941 pogrom in Jedwabne mentions pogroms in
other towns including Bielsk Podlaski. The paper on which
the article is based, (titled "Wokół Jedwabnego,"
translated as Jedwabne and Beyond) dates the pogrom in
Bielsk Podlaski to July 5–7, 1941. Although no longer
available at the link provided at the bottom of the
article, the paper (a PDF) can be downloaded here. Twelve pages in English
follow the table of contents.
- Report on
the publication of a Polish book titled "The Art of Survival. Soviet
deportations from the Bielsko Poviat 1940–1941. Deportees’
Accounts."
- Yad
Vashem’s The
Righteous Among the Nations Database lists 36 results
in a search
for Bielsk Podlaski.
- Between
November 2 and 15, 1942, approximately 7,000 local Jews and
4,000 more from Boćki, Brańsk, Narew, Orla, Rudka,
Kleszczele, and Milejczyce, were deported from the ghetto of
Bielsk Podlaski to Treblinka. A
Year in Treblinka (full text), by Jankiel Wiernik, is a first-person account of the
systematic murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews at the
extermination camp. Weirnik's early account was published by
the Forverts in 1944 and later republished online by The
Forward.
- Treblinka
on the Jewish Virtual Library, JewishGen, The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, and on Yad Vashem here, here, and here.
- These
are the holy names of Bielsk Podlaski, a necrology
from the Bielsk Podlaski yizkor book
After the war
Cemeteries
Synagogues
- The Yafeh Einayim synagogue:
history, photos, and map
- Photo
of another synagogue in Bielsk Podlaski
- The Bialystok Great Synagogue
- Wooden
Synagogues, by
Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, is one of the most, if not
the most, important and comprehensive works on the wooden
synagogues of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Here is a review of the book following the release
of its English translation in 1959, and here is an article about the updated and expanded
version of the book that was released in 2015 titled Heaven’s
Gates: Wooden Synagogues in the Territories of the Former
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
- Wikipedia
entry on Wooden synagogues in the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
- Kristallnacht and Synagogue
Desecration,
photos of synagogues devastated by the Nazis, includes
photos of the synagogues in Orla and Bialystok, not far from
Bielsk Podlaski. This is a part of A Teachers Guide to the
Holocaust.
The Rabbis of Bielsk
The following
chapters in the Bielsk Yizkor book discuss the Rabbis of
Bielsk Podlaski:
- Kehila
and Rabbinate, by Haim Rabin
- Disputes
with Rabbis in Bielsk, by
B. Shtern
- The Rabbis'
Deeds, by M. Alpert, on page 165
- My Father, haRav
Ben-Da'at, by Sara Simner, on page 193
- The Life
Story of R' Aryeh Leib Yellin, Excerpts from the book about
"Yefeh 'Einayim" that was published in Jerusalem in the year
1975 [the text matches Rabbi Aryeh Loeb Yellin, Author
of "Yefeh 'Einayim" by Rivka Ziskind, published in
Jerusalem in 1973], on page 217
Rabbi Aryeh Loeb Yellin, born
in Skidel, Lithuania in 1820, served as the Chief Rabbi of
Bielsk from 1856 until his death in 1886. Yellin's published
works are sermons, responsa, commentary, and "glosses" to the
Babylonian Talmud. Known as Yefeh 'Einayim, the glosses were
printed in the back of the Vilna edition of the Talmud. See
the following for references:
- English,
Hebrew, and Polish entries on Wikipedia.
Use the drop down list to change languages. The Hebrew
language entry is the most detailed. Let your browser
translate it.
- Jewish Encyclopedia
- Report in
the Hebrew daily newspaper Hayom (St. Petersburg) of
Rabbi Yellin's death on April 12th 1886 which corresponds to
7th Nissan 5646. The report is on page two, left column,
fifth paragraph.
- In the
English introduction to A Commentary on the
Palestinian [Jerusalem] Talmud, author Louis Ginzberg
wrote the following about Rabbi Yellin's work in Yefeh
'Einayim:
- “The
collection by Jellin of parallel passages to the
Babylonian Talmud from the Palestinian Talmud and, the
tannaitic and amoraic Midrashim is so amazing that in
one’s admiration for the author’s mastery over the
entire talmudic literature, one almost forgets his
excellent explanations and interpretations of the
Palestinian Talmud, which rank among the very best of
their kind. The importance of Jellin’s notes, especially
for the study of the relation of the two Talmuds to one
another, has been recognized by “modern” scholars who
often make use of them though many fail to acknowledge
the source of their information.”
- The Ha'amek Davar of Naftali Zevi
Yehuda Berlin
- Encyclopedia.com
- Beasts of Burden and One-Armed
Clockmakers
- WorldCat entry: Rabbi Aryeh
Loeb Yellin, author of Yefeh 'Einayim, by Rivka
Ziskind
- Yellin,
Aryeh Loeb. Yefeh 'Einayim in the Babylonian Talmud,
Vilna Edition
Rabbi Ben Zion Sternfeld (1835 – 1917) was appointed
Rabbi of Bielsk after the death of Rabbi Yellin.
Rabbi
Moyshe Chaim is written about in Disputes
with
Rabbis in Bielsk, but the chronology of his Rabbinate is
not given.
Rabbi Moshe Aharon Bendas (also spelled Ben Da'as,
Benda’at, and Ben Daat) was born around 1865-1870. The last
Rabbi of Bielsk, he was designated by his father-in-law, Rabbi
Sternfeld, to be his successor. Haim Rabin wrote that
“together with his flock, he was engulfed by the Holocaust and
died the death of a martyr.” Pages of Testimony
in Yad Vashem submitted by his son and grandson state that
Rabbi Bendas was murdered at the Majdanek death camp. According
to this site, which
includes his photograph, he died in Treblinka. The entry for
Bielsk in The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume II:
Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe, says that
he “perished [in the ghetto] protesting the lack of rations
with a hunger strike.” Although there are several footnotes
citing primary sources, there is no footnote in the
encyclopedia for this statement about his death. The ghetto
was established in August of 1941 and liquidated in November
of 1942. For more about the ghetto see Eyewitness
Holocaust testimony of life and death in the Bielsk
Podlaski ghetto.
Rabbi Mordechai Goldin served
concurrently with Rabbi Bendas. He was head of and
teacher at the Beis-Yosef Yeshiva of Bielsk-Podlaski (a
Rabbinical College). Letters and cards he wrote can be read in
the online
archives of the Center for Jewish History. Much
of Rabbi Goldin's correspondence was addressed
to Vaad HaYeshivos
(or Hayeshivot) in Vilnius. His letters bear the seal of
Yeshiva Beis-Yosef in Bielsk. That same seal appears on an
appeal for funds that was republished in the Bielsk yizkor
book in A
Call for Help from the Bielsk Yeshiva on page 488.
Rabbi Yechezkel
Levintal
Rabbi
Yechezkel Levintal (also spelled Leventhal or Levinthal) was
written about on page 172 of the yizkor book. He was known
primarily as "the Dayan," meaning the judge, during the tenure
of Rabbi Bendas. His responsibilities as the dayan would have
involved presiding over various legal and religious matters.
Other Rabbis
Other Bielsk rabbis whose names appear on correspondence
in the CJH archive
are Rabbi Epstein, Rabbi L. Lewin, Rabbi Maier Rubin, and
Rabbi Arye Ze’ev Lewin (Mashgiach of Yeshivas Beis Yosef
of Bielsk-Podlask).
Photographs of Bielsk
- View
images of Bielsk Podlaski contributed by the JewishGen
community
- The Ghetto
Fighters House Archives has photographs of individuals, documents,
and groups including the HeChaluts, Frayhayt, and
Gordonia movements. From their web site, click “Search the Archive,” then
enter your search terms (e.g., Bielsk, Bilsk, or Bielsk
Podlaski).
- Pre-war
photographs of Bielsk and other related materials can be
found on the web site of The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum.
Archival Holdings
- Search the Ellis Island database for records of immigrants from
Bielsk Podlaski. Searching for Bielsk, without using a
surname, returns 1,171 records. Searching for Billsk returns
19 records.
- Yad Vashem
holds an extensive collection of materials, many of which
are available online.
- The Auschwitz searchable database allows you to search for records
of those murdered at Auschwitz.
- The JewishGen All Poland Database, containing over 2 million entries
for individuals from Poland.
- Bielsk
Podlaski holdings in Eastern European archives identified by
the Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots
Foundation.
Search the Archive Database for Bielsk to see the inventory
showing holdings in five different archives. Materials
include census records taken in eleven different years,
birth, death, marriage, emigration, army, and notary
records.
- Jewish Records Indexing - Poland has a searchable database of vital
records, including records from Bielsk Podlaski.
- JewishGen
InfoFile - Polish Archives Holdings of
Jewish Vital Records.
- Polish State Archives and the State Archives in Bialystok.
- Read
chapters excerpted from Jewish Roots in Poland on the Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots
Foundation.
- Writing to Poland JewishGen InfoFile.
- 1911 - 1912 Russian Business
Directory
- 1928 Business Directory
- 1930 Business Directory
- 1936 Phone Directory
- 1937 Phone Directory
Books
- My
Sack Full of Memories by Zwi Lewin (who was born in
1934 in Bielsk Podlaski). Published by Hybrid Publishers,
Victoria, Australia, in 2019. A free sample of the book
can be read here.
- History of the Jews in Poland and Russia by Simon Dubnow.
- Rabbi
Aryeh Loeb Yellin Author of “Yefeh ‘Einayim,”His Life
and Literary Work, by
Rivka Ziskind. Published
by Rubin Mass Publisher, Jerusalem 1973. Hebrew with a
five-page summary in English. Also see
here, here, and here.
- Memories
of Stormy Years, Bielsk 1898-1907, by
Beryl Stern. Published by A Committee of the Workmen’s
Circle, Newark New Jersey in 1953. Hebrew. This book has
been digitized and can be read here.
- Jewish
Bialystok and Surrounding in Eastern Poland, by Tomasz Wisniewski. Published
by the Ipswich Press, Ipswich, Massachusetts, 1998. Two
pages of this book are specific to the history of and
conditions in Bielsk Podlaski.
Documents
Maps
Related Materials
While
not specific to Bielsk Podlaski these materials may provide a
glimpse of the lives of our ancestors.
o Jewish
Life In Bialystok (including footage of the great
synagogue in Bialystok and a young girl eating a bialy)
o A
Day In Warsaw
o Jewish
Life In Kracow
o Jewish
Life In Lvov
o Jewish
Life In Vilna
o Other films about Jewish communities, the
Holocaust, early Zionism, and Israeli statehood
- Philosophers,
Fiddlers, and Fools is a wonderful and moving audio program
containing music, stories and memories from a
vanished world.
o 2001
o 2002
o 2003
o 2004
o 2005
o 2006
Search JewishGen Databases
- Search the JewishGen Family
Finder for others researching Bielsk Podlaski. Also search
the discussion group for
references to family names and Bielsk Podlaski.
Compiled
by Andrew
Blumberg
Updated February 28, 2024
Copyright © 2002 - 2024
Andrew Blumberg
JewishGen Home Page
| KehilaLinks
Directory
This
site is hosted at no cost by JewishGen, Inc., the Home of
Jewish Genealogy. If you have been aided in your research by
this site and wish to further our mission of preserving our
history for future generations, your JewishGen-erosity
is greatly appreciated.