RECHITSA is a small oil-producing town, 350 km (220 miles) south of the capital Minsk, Belarus.
A city in Gomel oblast, Belorussian SSR Rechitsa had one of the oldest Jewish communities in Belorussia. In 1648 the rampaging Cossacks murdered many of its Jews. The Jewish population in 1766 numbered 133, increasing to 1,268 in 1800 (two - thirds of the total population), and 2,080 in 1847. The city was a center for Habad Hasidism, whose theological doctrine stress the relationship between God and man. At the end of the 19th century Rechitsa had a yeshivah and was the residence of the hasidic leader, R. Shalom Dov Ber Schneersohn. In 1897 the 5,334 Jews of Rechitsa constituted 57% of the population. In October 1905 the peasants of the surrounding area participated in a pogrom which killed more than 50 Jews, among them members of the Jewish self - defense force. On the eve of World War I the Jewish population numbered about 7,500. Jewish communal and religious life began to decline under Soviet rule. In 1926 there were 7,386 Jews. On November 25, 1941, the Nazi invaders murdered about 3,000 Jews who had remained in the city. A few Jews returned after the war.
Today you will no longer see any visible signs of past Jewish presence in Rechitsa. They have not been preserved in the names of streets, squares or public gardens, there are no memorial plaques or monuments in public places. In this, Rechitsa is no different from the other small and mediumsize Belorussian towns which used to have rich Judaic traditions and were deprived of their distinct identity by the Soviet national policy. Synagogues, prayer houses and yeshivas, heders, secular Jewish schools and cultural establishments in the town and its environs were outlawed. Private Jewish trade and handicraft businesses meeting the demand of their Belorussian neighbors were nationalized by the Bolsheviks as part of their effort for a "more just world order".
Today there are 450 Jews in Rechitsa. At least 300 of them are elderly people.
1 January 2000 : The territory of Belarus is divided into 6 regions (oblasts) - the Brest, Vitebsk, Gomel, Grodno, Mogilev and Minsk regions, and 118 districts (rayons).
Courtesy of: "Encyclopedia Judaica" Ă1972, Keter Publishing House Jerusalem Ltd Jerusalem, Israel
The October 21-24, 1905 Rechitsa pogrom was not an isolated episode. It became an additional factor in the general disillusionment of the Belorussian Jews as they assessed their future in Russia. The unwillingness and inability of the Tzarist regime to evolve into a constitutional government and to ensure equality before the law and equal economic opportunities for all the peoples in the country had become evident. The result was unprecedented Jewish emigration.
In 1904-1905 the number of Jews who emigrated to the United States alone was 92,383, or 50% of the total number of emigrants, and in 1905-1906, Jewish emigrants numbered 125,234, or 85% of the total. If one takes into account those who left for Argentina, Canada, Palestine, and other countries, this number would be doubled. See.V. Gornberg, Emigratsiia I immigratsiia (Emigration and immigration) (Vilna, 1907), Table 1; S. Fornberg, Evreiskaia emigratsiia (The Jewish emigration) (St. Petersberg, 1908).
