History

Lechowitz was part of the Ostrog province before World War I, and part of the Volhynia province between the two world wars. After World War II, the town was part of the Soviet Union and became known as Belogor'ye, and subsequently became incorporated in the Ukraine and is known as Bilohirya. Nearby towns include Kornytsya (Kornitsa), Yampil (Yampol), and Kremenets. The history of Lechowitz is bound up in the history of the surrounding region.

The Jewish population of Lechowitz in 1900 is reported as 1,400. This was about a quarter of the town population. Reportedly the Jewish and non-Jewish town residents got along well. The Jewish population was devastated in World War II. Although some survivors of the war returned to Lechowitz, it is believed that there are no Jews living there today.

The following resources provide a history of Jewish life in Volhynia and the Lechowitz area:

The holocaust had a devastating effect on the Jews of Lechowitz. Germany invaded Russia on June 22, 1941 in Operation Barbarossa. The invasion was swift and forceful, leaving many residents trapped and overcome. Lechowtiz was occupied in early July 1941. The situation quickly became very grim. Hundreds of people were shot to death over the summer of 1941. The remaining Jews were then confined to ghettos. There were two ghettos - one in the town center, and the other on the grounds of a former estate. In June or July of 1942, the Germans formed Einsatzgruppen, or killing squads, to carry out German orders to execute communist officials, Jews, politicians, and other categories of people. Einsatzgrup C was deployed to Volhynia, where they conducted mass murders, including the slaughter of 33,000 Jews at the ravine of Babi Yar in Kiev. In Lechowitz, there were mass shootings in the surrounding forests, killing virtually the entire Jewish population of those towns. According to the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust, there were 2,300 Jews from Lechowitz and surrounding towns who were murdered in the forest outside the town of Trotsyanka. This devastation was echoed in hundreds of other communities in the Soviet Union. By the spring of 1943, when Germans began their retreat from Soviet areas, the Einsatzgrupen had murdered an estimated 1.25 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others in western Russia.

Some Jews survived the war having served in the armed forces. A few others managed to escape to safety elsewhere within the Soviet Union or beyond.

To review the ever-growing database of Jews from Lechowitz/Bilohirya killed and persecuted in the war, visit the Yad Vashem website here: http://yvng.yadvashem.org/index.html?language=en&s_lastName=&s_firstName=&s_place=Lyakhovtsy%20Ukraine

After the war, the Soviet government changed the town name to Belogorye, which sounds more Russian and less Polish. In August 1991, Ukraine became an independent state, and Belogorye is part of that state (taking on the Ukrainian variant of the town name, "Bilohiria)".

The New York Public Library holds a copy of the Yizkor Book for Lechowitz. The book is written in Yiddish. If you can provide translation help, please contact me. Review the Yizkor Book by going here and selecting the community of "Lachovitz." Scroll down through the text several pages for the text to begin.



Compiled by Miriam Kirshner

Copyright © 2018 Miriam Kirshner


Photos on this website are not to be reproduced in any form without express written permission of the owners