Berdichev (Ukrainian language: Бердичів, Russian language: Бердичев) is a town in Zhytomyrs'ka oblast', Ukraine, 44 km South of Zhytomyr. Pop. about 88,000 (data 2001).

History

In 1430, Great Knight of Lithuania Vitautas (великий князь литовский Витовт) granted the rights over the area to Kalinik, the procurator (наместник) of Putivl' and Zvenigorod, and it is believed that his servant named Berdich founded a khutor (remote settlement) there, however the etymology of the name Berdichev is not known.

In 1483, Crimean Tatars destroyed the settlement. During the 1546 partition between Lithuania and Poland, the region was listed as a property of Lithuanian magnate Tyshkevich. According to the Treaty of Lublin (1569), Volhynia formed a province of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The fortified Carmelite monastery (built in 1627), captured and plundered by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1647, was reestablished in 1864.

In 1846, the town accounted 1893 buildings, 69 of which were brick-made, 11 streets, 80 walkways and 4 squares. Honore de Balzac visited it in 1850 and noted that its unplanned development made it resemble the dance of polka as some buildings leaned left, while others right.

Jewish history

According to the census of 1789, the Jews constituted 75% of Berdichev's population (1,951 out of 2,640, of whom 246 were liquor-dealers, 452 houseowners, 134 merchants, 188 artisans, 150 clerks and 56 idlers). In 1797, Prince Radziwill granted seven Jewish families the monopoly privilege of the cloth trade in the town. Jews were a major driving force of the town's commerce in the first half of the 19th century. They founded a number of trading companies (some traded internationally), banking establishments, served as agents of the neighboring estates of Polish nobility (szlachta).

By the end of the 18th century, Berdichev became an important center of Hasidism. As the town grew, a number of noted scholars served as rabbis there, including Lieber the Great and Joseph the Harif and the Tzadik Levi Yosef Yitzhak of Berdichev (the author of Kedushat Levi), who lived and taught there until his death in 1809. In its heyday, Berdichev accounted some eighty synagogues and battei midrash and was famous for its cantors.

Berdichev was also one of the centers of the conflict between Hasidim and Mitnagdim. As the ideas of Haskalah influenced parts of the Jewish communities, a large group of Maskilim formed in Berdichev in the 1820s.

In 1847 23,160 Jews resided in Berdichev and by 1861 the number doubled to 46,683, constituting the second largest Jewish community in the Russian Empire. The May Laws of 1882 and other government persecutions affected Jewish population and in 1897, out of the town's population of 53,728, 41,617 (about 80%) were Jewish. 58% of Jewish males and 32% of Jewish females were literate.

Until World War I, the natural growth was balanced by the emigration. During the 1917 October Revolution and Russian Civil War, the mayor of the town was the Bundist leader D. Lipets. In early 1919, the Jews of Berdichev became victims of a pogrom perpetrated by the Ukrainian army (See Symon Petliura).

The Soviet authorities closed or destroyed most of the town's synagogues. (See Yevsektsiya)

In the 1920s, Yiddish language was officially recognized and in 1924, the first in Ukraine official law court to conduct its affairs in Yiddish was established in the city, but in the 1930s, the use of Yiddish was curtailed and all Jewish cultural activities were suspended before World War II.

Most civilians from areas near the border did not have a chance to evacuate when the Nazi began their invasion on June 22, 1941. An "extermination" unit was established in Berdichev in early July 1941 and a Jewish ghetto was set up. It was liquidated on October 5, 1941, after all the inhabitants were murdered.

A 1973 Ukrainian-language article about the history of Bedichev says: "Гестапівці стратили 38 536 чоловік." (Gestapo killed 38,536 persons.) In line with the official Soviet policy regarding the Jews and the Holocaust, the article does not mention the word "Jew" and does not acknowledge the genocide of the Jews.

Demographics

See also

• Shtetl
• List of European cities with alternative names
• Vassily Grossman
• History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union

Footnotes

External links

• Jewish History of Berdichev, Part 1 and Part 2 at Jewishgen.org
• Berdichev at Simon Wiesenthal Center
• The history of Berdichev (1999) (in Ukrainian language: Бердичівська земля з найдавнішших часів до початку ХХ ст.]

Resources

• From Berdichev to Jerusalem by Miriam Sperber, 1980
• The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman by John Garrand, 1996