Rembrandt, Jews in a Synagogue 17th century Etching and Drypoint
The following is a list of noteworthy individuals who played a role in the history of the Jewish community of Dzhuryn. Unlike larger cities, Dzhuryn’s historical figures were primarily local religious leaders, educators, and Holocaust-era community organizers rather than internationally known personalities. Their importance lies in preserving the life of the shtetl and helping the community survive crises.
Rabbi Leib Faybishovich : One of the earliest recorded rabbis of the Dzhuryn Jewish community in the 18th century. Led the congregation when the community was still small but growing. His leadership corresponds with the earliest documented Jewish settlement in the town.
Rabbi Meir Gleyts: Rabbi of Dzhuryn in the mid-19th century (around 1853).
Served when the town had a synagogue, a beit midrash (prayer school) with about 1000 parishioners.
Rabbi Herschel (Gershl) Koralnik: Rabbi and shochet (ritual slaughterer) of Dzhuryn in the late pre-WWII and wartime period. Played a leadership role when the Great Synagogue was closed by Soviet authorities and the community gathered in the smaller synagogue. During the Romanian occupation ghetto, he helped organize the local Jewish response to deportations and refugees. In the harsh winter of 1941-1942 there was not a single death because of the cold weather. He ordered firewood to be prepared from the synagogue's furniture, including the Holy Ark, and fed about 30 needy people every day.
Rabbi Baruch Khager (1895-1963): A member of the Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasty who was deported to the Dzhuryn ghetto with followers from Bukovina. His presence brought a group of Hasidic Jews to the town during the Holocaust period.
Max Rozenrauh: An attorney from Surceava, chairman of the Jewish Council of the Dzhuryn ghetto known for his harsh policies and accused by Lipman Konstadt, a member of the Council, of excluding local Jews from receiving aid in favor of the deportees. He was credited with helping to protect the ghetto residents from death.
Moshe Katz: Deputy Chairman of the Jewish Council of the Dzhuryn ghetto and considered the true manager. The Council organized a 20-person Jewish police force, a court, a hospital with 56 beds staffed by deported doctors, a pharmacy, and a kitchen for the poor established by Rabbi Barukh Hager. Katz took an active role in rescue operations, putting his own life in danger. He got ID cards for fleeing Jews who came from various places.
Lipman Konstadt: Committee Secretary of the Jewish Council and leader of the deportees who supported locals' rights to equal care, and is cited as an example of how difficult it was to create solidarity among the various Jewish deportee and local groups.
Leon (Lev) Averbuch: Director of the Jewish primary school established in the early 1920s. Graduate of the Odessa Jewish Teachers’ Institute. Important for maintaining Jewish education during early Soviet rule.
Dov Katz, Berl Rosenblatt, Borshy Brown [Bar-On?] and Bertel Harth: Former students and hospital workers who published a weekly six-page newspaper. The handwritten pages contained articles, descriptions and events from ghetto life, jokes and paintings. The newspaper was distributed at night. When the gendarmes discovered the existence of the newspaper, it was shut down.
Ruvin Moldovan: A local Jewish leader in the Dzhuryn ghetto. Worked with Rabbi Koralnik to collect money and bribes to save Jews from execution.
Semyon Krivoshein: A Jewish Russian military officer from a well-to-do family who later authored several books and wrote about the Dzhuryn ghetto during WWII when he served as a member of the Red Army.
Dr. Bigo (Dov) Harth: Advocate from Rădăuţi, founder and administrator of the orphange for children who had lost both parents. At the entrance to the institution was a sign that read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou founded strength (Psalm 8:3). The original essays written in Yiddish by 8 children in the orphanage describing their lives in the ghetto may be viewed here.
Moshe Salomon: Conducted the orphanage choir and taught music at the institution.
Victor Kutafyev: Leader of the remaining Jewish community in the late Soviet/post-Soviet period. By the 1990s only a handful of Jews remained in the town.