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A demographic profile of the Jews in Belorussia from the pre-war time to the post-war time

Before the Soviet–German War, the population of Belorussia was 10,528,000, or 9,200,000 within the modern borders of the country. The Jews numbered about a million, and may be tentatively classified into several categories. One of them was comprised of the Jews who lived in Eastern Belorussia. It was part of the former Pale of Settlement and consisted of the Homel, Minsk and Mohilev oblasts (regions), which were traditional places of compact Jewish settlement. According to the January 1939 Soviet census, 375,000 Jews resided there. On the basis of the annual population growth, it may be concluded that Eastern Belorussia had about 405,000 Jews in the first half of 1941. In the Soviet Union, Judaism was persecuted, synagogues were closed, and Zionism was considered the worst manifestation of Jewish nationalism. Yiddish schools were closed down, the circulation of Yiddish publications was considerably reduced, the activity of writers’ and artists’ organizations restricted, the Jewish kolkhozes (agricultural communes) disbanded and national administrative districts abolished. Despite all this, the compact Jewish population preserved remnants of the traditional Jewish style of life. There the Minsk, Homel and Mohilev dialects of Yiddish were still being spoken. During the 1939 census, 55% of Belorussian Jews named Yiddish their native language (37.4% named Russian and 7.6% Belorussian). Jewish folklore, customs, dietary customs, and the feeling of belonging to a group was not yet extinguished among Jews. Still, young people were being more actively involved in the Soviet reality and distanced from Jewry. Many saw in the community a remnant of the past, which ought to be dealt with in order to build a free society in the workers’ and peasants’ state. Many were trying to adjust to the new reality as fast as possible and moved to big cities in the republic, or in Russia and Ukraine. Life in urban centers deepened their remove from the Jewish traditions. Many deliberately renounced Yiddish in favor of Russian, many received vocational training and higher education and began to occupy responsible positions in state administrative bodies, in cultural, scientific and medical institutions and served in the army. The percentage of mixed marriages increased significantly, and the Jewish shtetl, where they left their relatives and parents, was becoming more and more a symbol of a vanishing world. The second category was comprised of the Jews of former Eastern Poland,