Stanislav
STANISLAV
STANISLAV (Pol. Stanislawow ; now called Ivanov Frankovsk ), city in Ukraine; under Poland-Lithuania until 1793; under Austria until 1918; and in Poland until 1939. A few months after the town was founded on his estates by Hetman Jedrzej Potocki (1662), he granted the Jews the right to settle there, extending to them other rights as well. The Jewish population consisted of leaseholders, innkeepers, craftsmen, and merchants, the last in competition with the Armenians living in the town. As a result of a succession of epidemics in the first 20 years of the 18th century, the number of Jews declined considerably, but within a dozen years or so this situation changed for the town's squires tried to attract Jews to the town. Around 1720 Józef Potocki confirmed the rights granted to the Jews in 1662. In 1745 the bishop of Lvov gave Stanislav Jews permission to erect a new synagogue but it was never built. Permission was obtained once more, with certain limitations, in 1761. In the fire of 1868 a large part of the town, including the synagogue and many Jewish houses, was burnt down.
The Jewish population grew from 404 families (about 45% of the total population) in 1793 to 2,237 persons (41.5%) in 1801; 6,000 (55%) in 1849; 10,023 (53%) in 1880; 15,860 (30.7%) in 1921; and 24,823 (41.3%) in 1931. From 1784 until the Holocaust, members of the *Horowitz family were rabbis in Stanislav. In the first half of the 19th century, influenced by the center in *Tysmenitsa, the Haskalah movement spread there. By the mid-19th century the rich merchants and the intelligentsia, who had assimilationist tendencies, dominated the community, but in 1880 Zionist influence became predominant in these groups. A regional Zionist committee was founded in Stanislav in 1898, and the Bar Kochba Students' Association at the beginning of the 20th century. Markus (Mordecai Ze'ev) *Braude played an important role in the development of Zionism and in the social and cultural life of the Jews of Stanislav. The Yiddish weekly, Stanislaver Nakhrikhten, edited by B. Hausmann, was published from 1902 to 1912. Other Yiddish weeklies were Der Yidisher Veker (1905–07) and Stanislaver Gloke (1909–14). A Hebrew literary monthly, Ha-Yarden (1906–09), was edited by Eleazar *Rokach.
During World War i Stanislav was twice occupied and destroyed by the Russian army; the synagogue was burnt down, and a large number of Jews escaped to Bohemia and Vienna. In 1918 the town was the temporary seat of the authorities of the West Ukrainian Republic; the Jewish National Council for East Galicia also had its seat there. During this period, in spite of the Ukrainian nationalist repressions, the social and cultural life of the Jews flourished; they organized a Jewish militia for *self-defense which included demobilized soldiers. In May 1919 the units of Jeff Haller (see Haller's *Army) entered the town, instigating pogroms and looting Jewish property.
[Jacob Goldberg]
In Independent Poland
In June 1919 the Polish authorities, influenced by the *Endecja party, dismissed the heads of the Jewish community of Stanislav, as well as all Jewish officials in the municipality, the post office, and railroad. Jewish teachers were not allowed to teach at public or private schools. By the end of August 1919 the situation improved somewhat after the visit of Henry Morgenthau (see Morgenthau *Commission). At the end of the year the Zionist leader Karl Halpern was appointed head of the community. At the 1922 elections to the Polish *Sejm, three Jewish delegates were elected from Stanislav and the province. In 1923, 13 Jews were elected to the 36-member municipal council. In order to minimize the importance of the Jewish community in the municipality, the Polish authorities incorporated several surrounding villages into Stanislav, thereby decreasing the percentage of Jews in the total population. At the 1927 municipal elections the Zionist leader Alexander Rittermann was elected deputy mayor, and out of eight town councilors three were Jews. The Jewish hospital was reopened in 1922. From 1922 the economic situation of Stanislav Jews considerably improved. In addition to wholesale and retail trade, they were occupied in the developing tanning industry, wood processing, and the production of alcoholic beverages and industrial alcohol. In 1924 the local yeshivah reopened. A Jewish secondary school was opened in 1924/25 and had 300 pupils a year later. There was also a Hebrew school, Safah Berurah. Vocational training institutes for boys, girls, and adults were established in the 1920s. A Yiddish weekly, Dos Yidishe Vort, close to Po'alei *Zion, appeared in 1918–19, and Shtegen, a Yiddish literary monthly edited by Max Tabak, was published from 1932 to 1935. Between the two world wars there were 55 synagogues and prayerhouses in Stanislav (including one of the Sadagura Ḥasidim).
[Arthur Cygielman]
Holocaust Period
The number of Jews in Stanislav had increased to approximately 30,000 in 1939. The Soviets occupied Stanislav on Sept. 18, 1939, and immediately prohibited the activities of the various Jewish organizations. However, for a while, Zionist youth organizations continued to function underground. Public trials against Jewish merchants were staged, and Zionist and other leaders were imprisoned.
When the German-Soviet War broke out in June 1941, the town was occupied by the Hungarian army, and soon the Ukrainians carried out acts of murder, robbery, and degradation against the local Jews. At the same time over 1,000 Hungarian Jews were brought into the city. When the town came under direct German administration (July 26, 1941), a Judenrat was appointed, headed by Israel Zeiwald. The first victims of the German extermination policy were 1,000 Jews of the local intelligentsia who were massacred in a nearby forest. In the largest and most ruthless Aktion, on Oct. 12, 1941, over 10,000 Jews were put to death at the local Jewish cemetery. Two months later the ghetto was established. Starvation and epidemics claimed further victims. On March 31, 1942, all the refugees from Hungary as well as 5,000 local Jews were dispatched to *Belzec extermination camp. On the basis of a rumor spread in August 1942 that a young Jew had struck a Ukrainian policeman, the Germans asked Mordecai Goldstein, then chairman of the Judenrat, to deliver 1,000 Jews to the Nazis. When he refused, he was hanged together with all the other members of the Judenrat; and over 1,000 Jews were murdered. On the first day of Rosh Ha-Shanah 1942, German soldiers broke into the ghetto, rounded up some 5,000 Jews, and sent them to Belzec. Many others were killed on the spot. There were further round-ups and in one of them the Germans shot about 1,000 Jews caught without labor permits (Jan. 26, 1943). The murder of the remainder of the community took place on Feb. 22, 1943, at the local Jewish cemetery. During the last stages of the liquidation of the Jewish community of Stanislav, several groups of young Jews organized themselves into partisan units. One group was headed by Oskar Friedlender of Buchach, and in another, a young woman engineer, Anda Luft, was known for outstanding partisan activities.
Some 1,500 Jews from Stanislav, some of whom had escaped prior to the Nazi occupation, survived in various parts of the world. In the city itself the Jewish community was not reestablished after the war. Organizations of Jews from Stanislav function in Israel and in the United States.
In later years, the renewed Jewish community in Ivanov-Frankovsk established a synagogue, a Jewish day school, and a community center. In 2003 the Jewish community opened an exhibition entitled "Jewish Stanislav." Dedicated to the history and development of the Jewish community in Stanislav, the exhibition depicts the history of the local community and synagogue. A new Holocaust memorial was erected near the city.
[Aharon Weiss /
Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]
bibliography:
D. Sadan and M. Gelehrter (eds.), Sefer Stanislav (Arim ve-Immahot be-Yisrael, vol. 5, 1952); E. Weitz, Al Ḥorvotayikh Stanislavov (1947); L. Streit, Dzieje Wielkiej Miejskiej Synagogi w Stanislawowie (1936); A. Szartowski, Stanisławł i powiat Stanisławowski pod wzglłem historycznym (1887); S. Barcaz, Pamitki miasta Stanislawowa (1858); Leibesmann, in: Yad Vashem Bulletin, 14 (1964), 64–66; H. Jonas, in: Chwila (Sept. 17, 1933).