Єврейська Галичина та Буковина

Підтримка досліджень та збереження культурної спадщини

In cooperation with:

The Jews
Jews first appear in documents from Dinov in 1552, and there were no known restrictions on the rights of the Jews to acquire real estate in the town. In the 17th century, the local Jews were engaged in moneylending, leasing (under the arenda system), and presumably commerce. However, the main economic and social growth of the Dinov Jewish community occurred in the 18th century, when there is also mention of a very rich Jewish merchant called “Der Reykher Volvish”—Wolf the Wealthy. With the Partition of Poland in 1772, laws and decrees were imposed on the Jews, as on the rest of Galician Jewry. Among other things, 11 poor Jewish families from Dinov were required to establish a Jewish agricultural farm. It is known that by 1782, a circular synagogue with oil paintings adorning its walls had been built in town.
Among the rabbis of Dinov, those of renown were mainly from the end of the 18th century and close to Hasidic circles. The first known rabbi of Dinov was Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Heshel, a disciple of Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak of Berdychiv. In 1820, Rabbi Yaakov Zvi Yalish—a disciple of the Seer of Lublin, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Rymanów, and Rabbi Israel Hoffstein, the Maggid of Kozhnitz (Kozienice)—became rabbi of the town. He was followed by Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Shapira, likewise a disciple of the Seer of Lublin and R. Mendel of Rymanów. R. Zvi Elimelech authored many homiletic, exegetical, and halakhic works and was considered one of the fiercest opponents of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) that began to flourish in Galicia in those years. His descendants succeeded him as rabbis of the town, and over time, this dynasty became the Dinov Hasidic court. It is not clear when the Hasidic court of Dinov became a pilgrimage site, but over the course of the 19th century, the court influenced the economics of the town—in the form of overnight lodging, catering, and various services provided to visitors of the rebbe’s court. Nevertheless, alongside the Hasidic activities, the town also had Maskilim in the spirit of the Galician Haskalah as well as free professionals, most of whom were inclined towards assimilation.
Over the course of the 19th century, Jews continued to work as peddlers and craftsmen. However, several Jews from Dinov became renowned as major traders of grain and timber. These men floated rafts down the San and Vistula Rivers to Gdańsk (Danzig). The Jews also began to become politically involved. When free elections began in the 1860s, a Jewish mayor and deputy mayor were elected. Towards the end of the 19th century, Zionist activity began in the town, and in 1902, a branch of the Zionist Organization was already established—despite the fact that the local rabbi, R. Yosef Shapira, a great-grandson of R. Zvi Elimelech, zealously opposed Zionism. He himself founded a branch of Agudath Israel in town in the 1920s, and in his opposition to Zionism, he publicly excommunicated and even expelled from the synagogue youth that belonged to HaShomer HaTzair.
With the outbreak of World War I, the Jews received instruction from the Austrian army to evacuate the city in October 1914. After returning to the city with the end of the war in 1918, they found it in ruins. As if this was not enough, in November 1918, Jewish stores and homes were plundered and their owners physically attacked by peasants from the surrounding area. To help the Jews of Dinov, there was an operation established through the Joint Distribution Committee to distribute food and clothing to those in need and to organize vocational courses for the unemployed. In 1919, a community council was re-established, which renovated the synagogues and batei midrash and re-established communal welfare societies to tend to the ill and bury the dead. In the 1920s, a free loan fund, a Jewish Credit Bank, and a loan fund of the Yad Ḥarutzim association were established. In addition, in 1919 a Tarbut school was established, and by 1926 it had c. 132 students in 4 classes. In that same time period, there was a Talmud Torah in town with c. 200 students, a yeshiva, “Etz Ḥayim”, where 25 young men studied, and a Bais Yaakov school for girls was founded. During these years, a public library, a youth club, and a community center were established. The Maccabi sports organization was also very active in the town during this time. During this period, aside from peddling and labor, there operated in town several Jewish-owned factories: a sawmill, nail factory, three soft drink plants, and a factory for the manufacture of jelly.
Political and Zionist activities returned to operation with greater vigor during the interwar period. In 1921, the first group of HaShomer HaTzair was established, and in 1922 members of the group held agricultural training in in Grochơw, by Warsaw, to prepare participants for immigration to Eretz Yisrael. Between 1924 and 1926, several members of HeḤalutz indeed immigrated to Eretz YIsrael. Branches of Zionist organizations from every stream continued to be active, and a few townspeople even belonged to the Communist movement.
World War II
With the outbreak of the war in September 1939, Jewish and Polish refugees began to arrive in Dinov. To maintain order, a Jewish-Polish militia was established to serve as a police force. When the German army entered the town about a week after the outbreak of the war, a relative calme prevailed there. However, several days later, on the second day of Rosh HaShanah 5700 (September 15, 1939), an SS company arrived, violently removed c.  300 Jews from the synagogue, led them to the nearby forest, and shot them to death there. Two weeks later, they expelled all the Jews of Dinov across the San River, to Soviet-occupied territory. Some of them settled in Lvov and Przemyśl, and their fate was similar to the fate of the Jews of those towns when war broke out between Nazi Germany and the USSR in June 1941. Some of them returned to Dinov; from there they were expelled to the Brzozów Ghetto, where they were murdered by the Nazis in August 1942. The remaining Jews of Dinov were sent to Siberia and deep into the USSR, where some of them met their death due to the difficult conditions. Of the Jews of Dinov, only c. 200-250 remained, most of whom stayed in the Soviet Union.

(Roee Goldshmidt)

Sources:
Pinkasei HaKehilot, vol. 3, Dinov, pp. 116-8.
Sefer Dinov: Sefer Zikaron Le-Kedoshei Kehilat Dinov She-Nispu Ba-Sho’ah Ha-Nazit, edited by Y. Kassa and M. Rinat, Tel Aviv: 1978.