Luninets

Luninets ( _be. Лунінец, _pl. Łuniniec) is a town and administrative centre for the Luninets district in Brest Province, Belarus, before which it was in Poland (1540-1793, 1920-1939) and Russia and the Soviet Union (1793-1920, 1939-1941, 1944-1991). It has a population of some 24,000, and is immediately east of the Pinsk district within Brest. It was home to Luninets air base during the Cold War.

History

Luninets is said to be mentioned in print sources dating to 1540. It was part of the Pinsk region which was under Polish rule between the 16th and 18th centuries but fell to Russia in 1793 in the Second Partition of Poland. In 1888, while under Russian sovereignty, a railway junction was built in Luninets, linking it by rail to Warsaw, Rivne, Vilna and Homel, and a proper railroad station was added in 1905.

Luninets became part of Poland in 1920 following the Polish-Soviet War, but nineteen years later was incorporated back into the Soviet Union in 1939, and -- with the exception of occupation by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944 -- remained part of the Soviet Union until 1991, at which time sovereignty ceded to the Republic of Belarus.

Jewish Community (Shtetl)

Many Jews moved into Luninets, particularly from nearby Kozhanhorodosk, following the town's linkage by railroad which established it as an important regional centre. Most of them settled in its Zamed quarter and market area. At the community's height the Jewish population numbered roughly 3,000; a third of the town's population.

Religious and Cultural Life

Four Hasidic groups were represented among Luninets's Jewish population: Karlin, Stulin, Horodok, and Brenza. Religious life was centred around four synagogues, which also functioned as social gathering places for young adults. In 1910 a mikva (ritual bath) was added, along with a cemetery.

Education was dispensed through a Talmud Torah, which included a well-liked educator known as Rabbi Perez; a mixed experimental "Klass" school founded in 1906 by a teacher named Kaplansky; a Hebrew Tarbut school; and a yeshiva, Beth Israel. The yeshiva was headed by Rabbi Elazar Shach, who would go on to become one of Israel's most eminent Haredi rabbis and Talmudic scholars, dean of the prestigious Ponevezh yeshiva in Bnei Brak, and founder of the Degel HaTorah Lithuanian party.

Like many European shtetls, Luninets's Jewish community included both religious and secular Jews, and both bundist and Zionist movements. The shtetl's cultural life included a Habima drama circle and a secular library, named for Yosef Haim Brenner. Many of the town's Jews were active in trade unions and the workmen's circle as Bund members.

The local Zionist movement, led by teachers at the Tarbut schools included Zerah Bakleczuk, Ben Yishai, and Haim Gloiberson ben Maimam, extended to branches of the Keren Kayemet, Keren Hayessod, and Keren Ha-avoda. Local branches for the Hehalutz movement (1922) Poale Zion (1926), Hashomer Hatzair (1926), and the Revisionist Party (1929) followed. A local kibbutz was even set up, known as Kibbutz Shaharia, although it was dissolved when most of its members emigrated to Israel.

Economic Matters

Most of the Jewish residents were traders and craftsmen, however things turned bleak in the 1930s when the Polish government issued a boycott against all Jewish.

Holocaust

In 1939, the Soviet Union occupied the shtetl. Jewish schools were shut down, and stores and bank accounts were plundered. In June 1941, the Germans took control of Luninets, and although many residents attempted to flee into the Soviet Union, the majority were unsuccessful and were turned over to the Nazis. In August 1941 almost all of the men were shot and killed, and the women and children were moved into a ghetto. Latter that month, the Nazis shot and killed all the ghetto's remaining residents, burying them in a common grave.

Luniniec's only Jewish survivors are those who left before the war's outbreak, or the handful that managed to sneak into the Soviet Union during the war.

External links

* [http://members.aol.com/hghoover/genealgy/Luninets.htm Extensive resource on Jewish Luninets] [http://hometown.aol.com/hghoover/genealgy/LunYB.htm]
* [http://www.radzima.org/pub/miesta.php?lang=en&miesta_id1=brlulunc Photos on Radzima.org]