History

The Jews of Eišiškės believed that they had settled this area in pagan times. This legendary origin of the community was supposedly given by five families. Three names are known: Ben Josef (later Jozefowicz, Kabacznik), Ben Asher (later Aszerowicz, Jurkański) and Azrieli (later Azrielowicz, Edelstein). Some authors of the 19th century argued that the legend was true. Among others, Józef Jaroszewicz claimed that someone saw a tombstone in the Jewish cemetery in 1798, which was dated 1171. Tadeusz Czacki claimed that he found a tombstone in 1097.

Unfortunately, it is believed today that the legend is not supported by facts. The first mention of Jews living in Eišiškės dates back to 1753. According to the information coming from the inventory of the local county court, there were five Jewish plots in the northern suburbs of the town (near the bridge). One such plot was recorded in the church jurisprudence. However, the Jewish community was already relatively numerous at that time. In the town inventory from 1765, a synagogue plot on Rymkuńska Street (Polish: ul. Rymkuńska) was recorded. Sixteen different Jewish names are also mentioned: Lejbowicz, Mowszowicz, Hirszowicz, Morduchowicz, Jozefowicz, Izakowicz, Aronowicz, Nosowicz, Irszowicz, Ickowicz, Chaimowicz, Fiszelowicz, Berkowicz, Abramowicz and Zelikowicz. Considering the fact that in the 18th century Jews already constituted more than half of the population of the town and owned a plot of land for a synagogue and two cemeteries, one may arrive at a conclusion that they appeared in Eišiškės much earlier than in 1753.

In 1765, the Jews lived mainly at Wileńska (Polish: ul. Wileńska) and Rymkuńska streets and around the market square. They paid a total amount of 110 zloty in tax. They were also obliged to protect the buildings from fire. During the next decade, they moved to the area of Nowa Street (Polish: ul. Nowa), where a synagogue stood. More names were added to the inventory: Tawelowicz, Kuszelewicz, Szlomowicz, Michelowicz, Rubinowicz, some earlier names were missing. In 1782, 76 Jewish households with 466 inhabitants belonged to the Jewish Community Co-operative of Eišiškės, which also administered the villages of: Koleśniki, Dumbla, Raubiszki, Dociszki and others located in the area. There were 34 farms in the town itself. In 1783, it was noted that there had been two Jewish barbers in Eišiškės for forty years (one of them was Berko Jozefowicz). The Jews were engaged in trade, craft and farming; part of the community lived in poverty.

In the 19th century, Jews accounted for 60-70% of the population of Eišiškės. This was the “golden age” for the local Jewish community, both in economic and cultural terms. The inventory of 1814 included several new names (among others Joachimowicz, Olkienicki, Hercikowicz, Wolfowicz, Owsiejowicz), a plot of land of the Jewish Community Co-operative, where a synagogue and a house of prayer stood, was also mentioned. In 1847, 611 Jews belonged to the Jewish Community Co-operative. Some of them lived near Eišiškės and rented inns. The inventory of 1855 listed 86 different Jewish names, and as many as five buildings were listed on the spacious plot of the Jewish Community Co-operative. In 1880, more than half of the inhabitants of Eišiškės were Jews. Three Jewish prayer houses stood on the plot of the Jewish Community Co-operative. The synagogue, the old and the new beit ha-midrash were burnt In a fire in 1895, which destroyed most of the town. However, with the help of local and foreign Jews, the most important community buildings were soon rebuilt. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Jews started emigrating to Palestine, the United States and to other directions.

Emigration and World War I were the reasons for the decrease in the number of Jews in Eišiškės. In 1939, there were about 3-4 thousand of them; they accounted for more than half of the community. Their number increased later with the influx of refugees from Raduń. In 1939, Raduń was incorporated to Soviet Belarus and Eišiškės to Lithuania. Radun Jews fleeing from the Bolsheviks moved to Eišiškės, where they were hospitably received.

When Lithuania fell under Soviet occupation (1940-1941), Jewish supporters of communist ideology became very active. In 1940, larger Jewish shops were nationalised, including the iron warehouses of Morduch Abel and Chaim Gurewicz and the manufactories of Gitla Epsztejn, Mina Kaplan and Josel Waindenberg. The craftsmen were forced to join a local co-operative.

The German army seized Eišiškės on 23 June 1941. On 25-26 September 1941, the Germans massacred most of the Jews of the town and surrounding area. 989 men, 1636 women and 821 children from Eišiškės and 1,500 Jews from Olkieniki, Lejpun, Deksznia and surrounding villages were killed. The centre of Eišiškės, then almost entirely inhabited by Jews, was deserted. Only a small group of Jews, mostly men, managed to survive.

In the summer of 1944, the surviving Jews returned to Eišiškės. They tried to start their lives anew, and they also took care of the burials of the murdered Jews. In 2005, the American historian Yaffa Eliach stated in an interview in the New York Times that a pogrom took place in the town on 19 October 1944, in which Cypora Sonenson and her son Chaim were killed. The pogrom was allegedly carried out by a Home Army unit acting for anti-Semitic reasons. According to Prof. Eliach, after these events, the NKVD conducted its own investigation, sentencing the perpetrators to imprisonment in Vilnius or to exile in Siberia. Polish historians (including Marek Jan Chodakiewicz and Adam Michnik) have denied Eliach's version. Supposedly, the target of the AK unit's attack was NKVD collaborator Moshe Sonenson. His wife and son were accidental victims.

Many buildings that belonged to Jews before the war have been preserved in today's Eišiškės. The houses were distinguished, among others, by their location in relation to the street, but also by their length. The properties were usually a combination of several smaller buildings, in which several families lived. It was a way to pay smaller taxes. Houses were either built with their gable to the street or along it (more rarely). They often had rooms for a shop or a workshop, which were accessed directly from the street. Houses inhabited by Jews were distinguished by decorations (e.g. woodcuts). Most of the brick houses of the Jews of Eišiškėsstand around the town square and in Vilnius Street, a few have survived in Raduńska Street (Polish: ul. Raduńska). They were built of red brick in the historicist style.

Extract from the text originally published on zydai.lt.

Authors of the original version: Deiminta Keršytė, Agnė Rymkevičiūtė, Vidas Dusevičius

Bibliographical note

Buchaveckas S., Šalčios žemė, Vilnius 1992.

Chodakiewicz M. J., The last Rising in the Eastern Borderlands: The Ejszyszki Epilogue in its Historical Context [online] http://www.pacwashmetrodiv.org/projects/ejszyszki/ejszyszki.doc [accessed: 05 December 2016].

Eliach Y., There once was a world: a nine-hundred-year chronicle of the shtetl of Eishyshok, Boston 1998.

Ejszyszki, [in:] Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, vol. 1, eds. F. Sulimierski, W. Walewski, Warszawa 1881, pp. 319–320.