Lipkany

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LIPKANY

LIPKANY (Rom. Lipcani ), small town in N. Moldova, in the region of Bessarabia. Jews appeared there in the middle of the 17^th century. There were 82 Jewish families in Lipkany (out of a total of 203) in 1817, 4,410 persons (63% of the total population) in 1897, and 4,693 in 1930 (79.8% of the total). They were the chief exporters of farm products from Bessarabia to Austria and Germany. During the first half of the 19^th century the zaddik Meir of Peremyshlyany lived in the town for several years. The writers Judah *Steinberg and Eliezer *Steinbarg were born there. In May 1936 the Cuza Fascist Party convened in Lipkany, but Jewish self-defense prevented attacks against Jews. In June 1940 the town was annexed to the Soviet Union, and included in the Moldavian S.S.R.

[Eliyahu Feldman /

Shmuel Spector (2^nd ed.)]

Holocaust Period

On June 22, 1941, the Germans bombed the town, and it was devastated. When the town was taken on July 8, 1941, by German-Romanian forces, they carried out a pogrom the same day in which many Jews were killed, and they robbed almost all houses. The survivors (about 4,000) were taken on July 18 to a forest near Vertyuzhany and from there were sent on a death march which took them to *Sekiryany, *Yedintsy, and *Khotin, and back to Yedintsy; the old, the sick, and the children, who were unable to withstand the pace, were shot on the journey. From Yedintsy, the survivors were deported to *Transnistria, where most of them died. Only a few dozen Jewish families from Lipkany were saved by the arrival of the Soviet army. Almost all the young Jews from the town who joined the Soviet army at the beginning of the war were either killed or returned as invalids. One Jew from Lipkany, Abram Schneider, was decorated as a "Hero of the Soviet Union." The few surviving families, who returned to Lipkany in 1944, left the town soon, immigrating to Palestine.

[Jean Ancel]