Krzywicze — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

(In Jewish sources: Kryvits)
A small town in the north-east of the district of Minsk, Belarus.

Between the two World Wars it was in the district of Vilna, Poland. Krzywicze lies near the river Serwecz, in a region of coniferous woods. It was established in the 16th century in the princedom of Lithuania. Jews came to settle in the place in 1691, when the region was part of the kingdom of Poland-Lithuania. After the partition of Poland at the end of the 18th century, the region came under the rule of Czarist Russia and the Jews suffered many restrictions and persecutions. Jews who lived in nearby villages were obliged to abandon their lands and move to Krzywicze. With time the town developed and at the middle of the 19th century close to 700 Jews were living at the place.

The Jewish community had a Beth Midrash, a Talmud Torah and Heders, and charity institutions - a loan fund, a mutual help society, a Hevra Kaddisha, a Mikveh and a public bath. Trade relations with Vilna and other big towns improved the local economy. Conditions improved even further after World War I, when the region was given to Poland. The town became a centre of markets and fairs, and had a local council, a police force and a court of justice. Jews who had left the town during the war returned to it, houses were renovated and a new Beth Midrash was built.

The Jews of Krzywicze engaged in small trade, especially on Wednesday, the weekly market day, to which the villagers of the vicinity came to trade and shop. The Jews were shopkeepers and artisans, and there were in the place also a few workshops for the combing and dyeing of wool. Nevertheless, many of them were poor and some emigrated abroad. In the 1920’s and 1930’s a Zionist activity developed, and young people were locally trained for Aliyah to Eretz Israel.

In the 1930’s about 300 Jews were living at Krzywicze.

The Holocaust Period
When World War II broke out and Poland was occupied by the Germans, Krzywicze, along with the other eastern regions, was given to the rule of the Soviet Union under the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement. Jewish refugees from the occupied parts of Poland came to the town, many were absorbed in the community, and the number of Jews increased to 800.

The Soviet authorities entered Krzywicze in the second half of September 1939. They closed down all the communal institutions, the Beth Midrash was turned into a warehouse, the school into offices. All private enterprise was forbidden, men were conscripted for various menial tasks, the leaders were arrested and exiled.

On June 22, 1941, Germany launched the attack on the Soviet Union and the region of Krzywicze was occupied in a few days. The Germans, together with their Lithuanian and Ukrainian collaborators, rounded up all the Jews in the market place, burned scrolls of the Torah and ritual objects, and forced the Jews to dance around the fire. Curfew was imposed.

At the beginning of August 1941 a ghetto was delimited for the Jews of the town and the vicinity, it was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and guards. Jews who had managed to escape from the ghetto fled to the woods and some joined the partisans.

On February 28,1942, the Jews of the ghetto, 460 men, women and children, were taken outside the town and murdered.

After the war, survivors returned to the town. They gathered from the fields and woods the bones of the victims and brought them to a mass burial. In 1996 former Krzywicze Jews living in Israel went to Krzywicze and erected a memorial stone on the mass grave.

From: Beit Hatfutsot