Davyd-Haradok Guidebook

Town on the Horyn

Davyd-Haradok was established in 1100 by Prince David, grandson of Yaroslav the Wise: the name of the prince gave the name to the town. Due to its location on the River Horyn, the town dwellers engaged in boat-building and river trade, centered at the local river port. Wood, bread, agricultural products, tar, and other goods were floated along the Horyn and further down the Pripyat and the Dnieper rivers to Kyiv, as well as through the Oginski Canal to the Neman and further on to the Baltic Sea. On January 22, 1796, Davyd-Haradok obtained a coat of arms, the design of which reflected those economic activities of the town and which had a symbol of the river with a golden harbour, gates on both sides, and a golden ship reaching the river bank with three bales of goods.

Trade is quite significant, as this is a place visited by local people who either sell their products or pass them on to traders to take them to other towns; the products included ham, dried fish, different kinds of game, mushrooms, dried plums, etc., but, most importantly, tall calf-length boots – the pride of Davyd-Haradok’s shoemakers. All this is transported to Vilnius, Warsaw, and other cities every year. The residents are also famous for magnificent decorations of woven horse carts.

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A Jewish home at the Edge of the Town

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The Synagogue of the Stoliner Hasidim

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Bet-Midrash (Studyhouse) of the Rabbis

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The commercial center of David-Horodok

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The new cemetery in David-Horodok

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The cantor of the town with his singers

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David-Horodok's first-string soccer team, 1937. Right to left: Nachman (Chaneh) Yonush, Yeshayahu Magidovich, Yiztchak (Idel) Friedman, ?, ?, Shlomoh Kolozny, ?, Ya'akov Kolozny

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Preparation group in Lisovitch 1931

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Crowd from David-Horodok sending off a family making aliyah

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A corner of the new market in David-Horodok

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Nest of the Hashomer Hatzair in David-Horodok, 1932

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Funeral of Itzhak-Leib Zager, David-Horodok - 1939

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Perfomance of the The Dybbuk by the young amateurs of David-Horodok, 1938

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The Greble Street in David-Horodok

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The soccer team Hako'ah [The Strong or The Force] in David-Horodok in 1927

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The sawmill of Moche Rimar in David-Horodok. In the picture is Moche Rimar with some of his family members and supervisers

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The Great Synagogue or the Cold Synagogue (there was no heating)

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The Great Bet-Midrash (Religious Studyhouse)

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The Jews of Davyd-Haradok

Jews may have settled in Davyd-Haradok as early as the 14th–15th century but the process of Jewish settlement was particularly intense in 1521–1551, when the town came under the rule of Bona Sforza, the Polish queen and the Great Duchess of Lithuania. The Jewish community of Davyd-Haradok was subordinated to the kahal in Pinsk. A 1667 document notes that the kahal of Pinsk collected taxes from various Jewish communities, including the Jews of Davyd-Haradok. The Khmelnytsky Uprising in the mid-17th century left the town residents in a difficult financial situation, leading to a conflict between the Jewish communities of Davyd-Haradok and Pinsk that was resolved through the intervention of the Radziwiłł family, whose patronage made it possible that an independent kahal was established in Davyd-Haradok. Davyd-Haradok was a fairly small trade and craft centre, but still, in the 17th century its artisans engaged in 35 occupations. Prince Radziwiłł’s administration reform, which resulted in the town residents being categorised as serfs, did not affect Jews, who were allowed to continue to work as free residents in crafts and trade as well as to keep their shops, lumber mills, tailor and shoemaking workshops, and a bathhouse.

The bathhouse

I can see before my eyes the long building with red bricks, the high narrow windows with the small square bracketed panes. In the first anteroom, a pile of branches lay prepared. [...] From there a door led to the “thrashing bath.” The “thrashing bath” or, as others called it, the “sweat bath,” constituted another world. [...] The thick steam was intermingled with the stench of dirty underwear hanging from sticks inserted in the overlying rafters. Not every heart could endure it. Indeed this is the reason that such a frail Jew as Boroch the Planter never experienced the zest of being steamed-out in the Jewish David-Horodoker “sweat-bath.” The only one who felt better there than at home was Zelig’s son Moishe Mordechai the Fat. The heat was never enough for him. When he got together with Maier Hershl the Butcher, then things really were spirited. First Maier Hershl shouted in his husky voice, “Throw on another bucket!” To pour a bucket of water on the boiling hot stones in the oven required great skill and Moishe the Fat was an expert. The heat increased with one bucket after another. The steam could be cut with a knife, as it was thick enough simply to choke a person. At this point they both climbed up to the highest step and their work began. They raised and lowered their branches to clear away the steam on all sides. One thrash and then another, and a third, a fifth, and a tenth. […] And where did they go after the sweat-bath? To the mikve [ritual bath]. In the mikve room it was a little quieter.

The full bloom of the Jewish community

The number of Jews in Davyd-Haradok grew constantly. In 1782, the town had only one synagogue, but in 1865 it had three, and at the beginning of the 20th century, it had 5 shuls located close to one another: the Great Synagogue (also known as the Cold Synagogue, Yid.: Kalte shul), established thanks to the efforts of the glazier Pinchas Nowik; it was used from Passover to High Holidays, during late Spring–early Fall season, and was not used in winter as it was next to impossible to heat it. Therefore, it was called “cold” – not heated synagogue. There was also a beth midrash (study house) built by Zeev Yudovich; a beth midrash of the Ginsburg family; and the shul of Stoliner Hasidim (the so-called shtibl, derivative of the Yiddish for “chamber”), managed by Rabbi Abraham Kolton, known as “Malach” (Heb.: angel).

Even though Davyd-Haradok is located near Pinsk, Hasidim – those 18th-century religious enthusiasts – did not have much influence on the town’s Jewish community. The Jews of Davyd-Haradok were under the cultural influence of anti-Hasidic minded Litvaks, and in many houses, there was a portrait of Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon (d. 1797), who vehemently opposed the Hasidic movement. Having finished cheder, young boys continued their education in Litvak yeshivot. From 1917 on, the town also had a Hebrew-based and pro-Zionist Tarbut school, whose many graduates moved to big cities in order to pursue higher education.

Still, a small local Hasidic dynasty that was a branch of the Kashevka dynasty (from the village known today as Kashivka in the Vohlynia, Ukraine) later in the 19th century appeared in Davyd-Haradok. The dynasty was founded by Rabbi Shmuel of Kashivka, who was succeeded by his son, Rabbi Yekhiel Mikhl of Kashivka; but this line was not very large and was virtually unknown in Volhynia. The second son of Shmuel of Kashivka was Rabbi Zeev-Wolf Ginsburg, who founded a Hasidic court in Davyd-Haradok in the mid-19th century. After Zeev-Wolf, the dynasty was led by David, grandson Israel-Josef (d. 1899) and great-grandson Rabbi Zeev-Wolf (d. 1921). The last representative of this dynasty, Moshe-Yehoshua Ginsburg, was killed in the Holocaust, and with his death the Kashivka dynasty disappeared.

Industrialization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries radically transformed the life of Davyd-Haradok. The town expanded to the left bank of the Horyn River, where two watermills were built on the old river bed – the left-bank part of the town is still called Watermills [Pol.: Wiatraki]. Workshops were also opened where pots, jugs, and containers for vineyards were manufactured out of metal sheets. The local distillery produced annually about 450 buckets (5,400 liters) of vodka made of potato, not of grain and called peysakhovka (suitable for Passover), as it did not contain leavened bread and was fit for Passover use.

The first owners of passenger and cargo steamboats settled in town. A relatively small cargo and passenger steamboat, the “Leontina,” sailed on the Horyn and was used to deliver raw material from Volhynia to the Finkelstein’s tannery. Many residents worked at the local shipyard, established in 1830. Its last private owner was a Jew, Moshe Rymar. In 1939, after the town was captured by the Soviet army, the shipyard was taken away from the owner and nationalised.

World War II and the Holocaust

On the eve of the war, about 3,000 Jews lived in Davyd-Haradok. The town was captured by the Soviet army in September 1939, and incorporated into the BSSR. Then, on July 7, 1941, it was occupied by German forces. On August 10, 1941, 3,000 Jewish men aged 14 or older were shot in the Chinovsk-Horki forest, about four kilometers from the town. Women, children, and elderly people were forced to travel on foot and settle in the overcrowded ghetto in Stolin. Some people were billeted to live in the empty residences, some were taken in by relatives or friends. The others were sent back to Davyd-Haradok at the beginning of 1942, where a ghetto was established between Yukhnevicha, Lermontova, and Gorkogo Streets, on the right bank of the Senezhka River (a tributary of the Horyn). The number of prisoners, including the inhabitants of Olszany (Alshany) and Siemihościcze (Semigostichi), was 1,200. The ghetto was liquidated on September 10, 1942. Its inmates, mainly women and children, were shot in the deserted region of the Chinovsk valley. About 100 Jews managed to escape, and some of them joined the partisans.

The Nazis razed Jewish houses and synagogues and paved the road between Davyd-Haradok and Lakhva with material from the destroyed buildings (it was meant to be a retreat route for German troops).

Traces of Jewish presence

In Davyd-Haradok, as elsewhere in the private towns of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Jews lived in the central part of the town. Their houses frequently comprised a residential part as well as a store, workshop, and granary; the doors would open onto the street. Residents of Davyd-Haradok remember Jews as industrious people, good professionals who taught many Belarusians shoemaking and hairdressing. In the centre of the town lived a Jew called Rankin, who tanned hide and sewed boots (his house has survived at 1 Gorkogo St.). Certain Muravchik had a privately-owned manufacture in his house at 1 Yukhnevicha St., today a municipal library. The Borukhin family had a mill and sawmill; the building today is the seat of the Town Council, at 2 Yaroslavska St.

Neither the synagogue building nor either of the local Jewish cemeteries has survived. The synagogue was destroyed during the war, whereas the graveyards were washed away by the waters of the Horyn during water level rises in spring.

Present day

Davyd-Haradok has 6,500 residents and is the second largest town in the Stolin District – a good starting point for a cruise of the Pripat River or a trip to picturesque Polesie marshes.

Authors: Margarita Korzeniewska, Tamara Vershitskaya