Shklov is a town on the banks of the Dnieper River in the Mogilev District of Belarus, some 20 miles north of the town of Mogiliev, and 113 miles east-northeast of Minsk. Jews first received a charter to settle in Shklov in 1668. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Shklov became an important commercial center, where, in the words of a visiting diplomat in 1699, Jews were “the richest and most influential class of people in the city.” In 1746, Shklov's Jewish community briefly seceded from the regional council of Jewish communities (Va‘ad Medinat Rusyah), due to a dispute over its heavy tax burden. According to the Polish census of 1766, there were 1,367 Jews in Shklov, the same number as in Minsk.
The golden era of the Shklov Jewish community was the period between its annexation by Russia in 1772 and the Napoleonic war of 1812, when it was a thriving economic and cultural center. A yeshiva was established there by Binyamin Rivlin (1728–1812), a close disciple and associate of the Gaon of Vilna who trained a generation of scholars that followed the Gaon’s teachings, including Menachem Mendel ben Barukh Bendet of Shklov, who prepared many of the Gaon’s writings for publication. In early 1772 Shklov was the first community in Eastern Europe to pronounce the followers of Hasidism heretics, and Rivlin was the driving force behind the enactments against Hasidim issued by the Va‘ad Medinat Rusiya in Shklov in 1787.
In 1777, Count Semen Gavriilovich Zorich established a lavish court in Shklov, whose lifestyle and cultural institutions influenced part of the local Jewish population. Zorich’s Jewish contractors included Note Notkin, who became the preeminent Jewish political leader of late eighteenth-century Russian Jewry, and Yehoshua Zeitlin, who became a leading patron of Jewish scholarship in Russia. Both Notkin and Zeitlin maintained contact with leaders of the Berlin Haskalah and were influenced by their ideas. Several pioneers of the Haskalah in Russia lived in Shklov or on Zeitlin’s neighboring estate; they include Naftali Herts Schulman, who argued for the reform of Jewish elementary education, and Yehudah Leib Nevakovich, the author of a pamphlet pleading for the acceptance of Jews into Russian society.
During this period, Shklov was the largest center of Hebrew printing in Eastern Europe. In the 1790s, there were approximately 2,500 Jews in Shklov, constituting 80 percent of the local population.
In 1808–1809, Menachem Mendel and Yisrael ben Shmuel of Shklov organized the migration of several hundred Jews, including scholars and merchants, from Shklov to the Land of Israel. There they established the first non-Hasidic Ashkenazic communities in Palestine, in Safed and Jerusalem. After their departure, the influence of Lubavitch Hasidism grew in Shklov.
With the construction of railways that bypassed Shklov, the city declined. At its peak, in 1847, there were 9,677 Jews in Shklov; in 1897, there were 5,122 Jews and in 1939 only 2,132 Jews remained.
The Hebrew novelist Perets Smolenskin (1842–1885) studied in a yeshiva in Shklov during his youth; in his novel Kevurat ḥamor (A Donkey’s Burial; 1873) he depicted the community as superstitious and intolerant of enlightenment. The author Zalman Shneur (1886–1959) was a native of Shklov, and presented a nostalgic portrait of the town in his memoir Shklover yidn (Jews of Shklov; 1929).
After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the rabbi of Shklov was Mordechai Feinstein (brother of Moshe Feinstein), who headed an underground yeshiva until 1930. He was arrested in 1936, and died in Siberian exile. Under Soviet rule most of Shklov's Jews initially earned their living from commerce (until it was liquidated by the Soviet authorities at the beginning of the 1930s) and crafts. A small proportion of Jews worked as white collar workers and several dozen Jewish families as agricultural workers. In the 1920s the Jewish kolkhoz (a collective farm in the former Soviet Union) "Iskra" was established in the vicinity of Shklov. A Yiddish school operated in Shklov until all the Yiddish schools in Belorussia were closed in mid-1938. In 1939 only 26.2 percent of the town's population was Jewish. The rest of Shkolv's Jews, especially the young people, left the town for big towns and cities.
After the beginning of the German-Soviet War on June 22, 1941 many Jewish refugees arrived in Shklov. The town was occupied by the Germans on July 12, 1941. Few Jews succeeded in escaping. The first German troops who entered Shklov murdered 25 Jews in the town park. At the end of July 1941 the Germans appointed a local administration which ordered the concentration of Shklov's Jews into two ghettos - in the village of Ryzhkovichi, south of Shklov (in a fenced-off area near the local church) and in the area of a flax factory. About 100 other Jews were confined to the territory of the "Iskra" kolkhoz. The inmates of the Shklov ghettos were ordered to wear yellow Stars of David. They were humiliated, abused, and killed. The Jews were hardly given any food and were compelled to beg from the local residents. From mid-July to the beginning of October 1941 Shklov Jews were murdered by the Germans in murder operations at five different murder sites. Shklov was liberated by the Red Army on June 28, 1944.
In 1955, Jewish survivors from Shklov, led and organized by Hertzl Kalmykov, exhumed the bodies of their relatives who had been murdered during the Holocaust at various locations near Shklov and transferred them to the old Jewish cemetery in the town. The bodies were buried in five mass graves and a memorial was erected with a Star of David carved on it. The Russian inscription on the memorial reads: "To the victims of fascism. It is impossible to list the noble names, they are many, as you who read these words know. But no one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten." Over time the monument was surrounded by tombstones that surviving relatives erected for individual Holocaust victims.
The golden era of the Shklov Jewish community was the period between its annexation by Russia in 1772 and the Napoleonic war of 1812, when it was a thriving economic and cultural center. A yeshiva was established there by Binyamin Rivlin (1728–1812), a close disciple and associate of the Gaon of Vilna who trained a generation of scholars that followed the Gaon’s teachings, including Menachem Mendel ben Barukh Bendet of Shklov, who prepared many of the Gaon’s writings for publication. In early 1772 Shklov was the first community in Eastern Europe to pronounce the followers of Hasidism heretics, and Rivlin was the driving force behind the enactments against Hasidim issued by the Va‘ad Medinat Rusiya in Shklov in 1787.
In 1777, Count Semen Gavriilovich Zorich established a lavish court in Shklov, whose lifestyle and cultural institutions influenced part of the local Jewish population. Zorich’s Jewish contractors included Note Notkin, who became the preeminent Jewish political leader of late eighteenth-century Russian Jewry, and Yehoshua Zeitlin, who became a leading patron of Jewish scholarship in Russia. Both Notkin and Zeitlin maintained contact with leaders of the Berlin Haskalah and were influenced by their ideas. Several pioneers of the Haskalah in Russia lived in Shklov or on Zeitlin’s neighboring estate; they include Naftali Herts Schulman, who argued for the reform of Jewish elementary education, and Yehudah Leib Nevakovich, the author of a pamphlet pleading for the acceptance of Jews into Russian society.
During this period, Shklov was the largest center of Hebrew printing in Eastern Europe. In the 1790s, there were approximately 2,500 Jews in Shklov, constituting 80 percent of the local population.
In 1808–1809, Menachem Mendel and Yisrael ben Shmuel of Shklov organized the migration of several hundred Jews, including scholars and merchants, from Shklov to the Land of Israel. There they established the first non-Hasidic Ashkenazic communities in Palestine, in Safed and Jerusalem. After their departure, the influence of Lubavitch Hasidism grew in Shklov.
With the construction of railways that bypassed Shklov, the city declined. At its peak, in 1847, there were 9,677 Jews in Shklov; in 1897, there were 5,122 Jews and in 1939 only 2,132 Jews remained.
The Hebrew novelist Perets Smolenskin (1842–1885) studied in a yeshiva in Shklov during his youth; in his novel Kevurat ḥamor (A Donkey’s Burial; 1873) he depicted the community as superstitious and intolerant of enlightenment. The author Zalman Shneur (1886–1959) was a native of Shklov, and presented a nostalgic portrait of the town in his memoir Shklover yidn (Jews of Shklov; 1929).
After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the rabbi of Shklov was Mordechai Feinstein (brother of Moshe Feinstein), who headed an underground yeshiva until 1930. He was arrested in 1936, and died in Siberian exile. Under Soviet rule most of Shklov's Jews initially earned their living from commerce (until it was liquidated by the Soviet authorities at the beginning of the 1930s) and crafts. A small proportion of Jews worked as white collar workers and several dozen Jewish families as agricultural workers. In the 1920s the Jewish kolkhoz (a collective farm in the former Soviet Union) "Iskra" was established in the vicinity of Shklov. A Yiddish school operated in Shklov until all the Yiddish schools in Belorussia were closed in mid-1938. In 1939 only 26.2 percent of the town's population was Jewish. The rest of Shkolv's Jews, especially the young people, left the town for big towns and cities.
After the beginning of the German-Soviet War on June 22, 1941 many Jewish refugees arrived in Shklov. The town was occupied by the Germans on July 12, 1941. Few Jews succeeded in escaping. The first German troops who entered Shklov murdered 25 Jews in the town park. At the end of July 1941 the Germans appointed a local administration which ordered the concentration of Shklov's Jews into two ghettos - in the village of Ryzhkovichi, south of Shklov (in a fenced-off area near the local church) and in the area of a flax factory. About 100 other Jews were confined to the territory of the "Iskra" kolkhoz. The inmates of the Shklov ghettos were ordered to wear yellow Stars of David. They were humiliated, abused, and killed. The Jews were hardly given any food and were compelled to beg from the local residents. From mid-July to the beginning of October 1941 Shklov Jews were murdered by the Germans in murder operations at five different murder sites. Shklov was liberated by the Red Army on June 28, 1944.
In 1955, Jewish survivors from Shklov, led and organized by Hertzl Kalmykov, exhumed the bodies of their relatives who had been murdered during the Holocaust at various locations near Shklov and transferred them to the old Jewish cemetery in the town. The bodies were buried in five mass graves and a memorial was erected with a Star of David carved on it. The Russian inscription on the memorial reads: "To the victims of fascism. It is impossible to list the noble names, they are many, as you who read these words know. But no one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten." Over time the monument was surrounded by tombstones that surviving relatives erected for individual Holocaust victims.