Les Juifs de Białystok

Białystok, a textile industrial center in eastern Poland, was home to a large and dynamic Jewish community that constituted a large share of the urban population. An important center of the Jewish labor movement, notably the Bund, it also developed Zionist currents, Yiddish and Hebrew schools, and a dense associative life, its members working in weaving, crafts, and commerce. The city was the birthplace of Dr. Ludwik Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto. Under Nazi occupation, the community was almost entirely annihilated: the ghetto, site of an armed uprising in August 1943, was liquidated and its inhabitants deported to Treblinka and other camps.

Sources & resources

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan