Boguslav Collection Point

Boguslav in Kiev Gubernia
by Deborah G. Glassman, copyright 2005

Ita WOLINSKY GREENBERG of Boguslav in the midst of her family
This is the only clear photograph I have of a Wolinsky. The older woman in the middle of the front row is Ita Wolinsky Greenberg. She was born in Boguslav, immigrated first to Odessa, then to Alexandria, to Palestine, and finally settled in Melbourne - photo and notes by Steve Orlen

One picture is a start on a website that can bring families together across oceans. Please share your pictures, your stories, the records you have found in your search about your family and their homes in Boguslav!

History

Boguslav began its existence as a Lithuanian city in the twelfth century, passed to Polish control by the end of the fifteenth century and the Jews were already present there from at least the early 1600s. A large and substantial synagogue was part of the city's notable architecture from the 16th century period of Jewish settlement. Jews were active in all spheres of town business during the Polish period and though the town tried to get the right to restrict them from certain activities, they were not successful in the face of the opposition of the local nobleman who owned the city outright. Although Russians and Poles note that in both the Polish-Muscovy wars and the Khmilnitsky Massacres, Boguslav took heavy losses, no Jew wrote of the communities's losses here so it is not recorded in Jewish sources.

The eighteenth century saw the ambitions of Russia's Empress Catherine the Great played out in their front yard with the Haidamaks being incited to attack vulnerable Jewish and Polish settlements throughout the Ukraine. The city was not defensible and the Jewish population fled to safer havens in 1768, their homes were destroyed, and their movable property largely vanished. The 1765 tax receipts had recorded a flourishing community of 574 head of households able to pay the poll-tax, but just three years later in the wake of the 1768 Moscow-supported attacks, only 251 remained. Boguslav remained a Polish city until the last of Poland was divided by its neighbors when they found themselves Russian subjects. [According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, a Jewish printing press was established in the year 1809 in Boguslav but according to the Wiesenthal Center which had much of the other information just listed as well,] the Hebrew printing press was established there in 1820 - 21. ... Jewish- owned enterprises included textile and tanning factories, and that Jews engaged in handicrafts and dealt in grain and fruit. The Jewish population numbered 5,294 in 1847 and 7,445 in 1897 (650f the total). The Wiesenthal information was found on a search of cached Google pages http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x03/xr0392.html as retrieved on Nov 16, 2004.

The Jewish Encylopedia printed in the early twentieth century says "The town has a population of about 12,000, of which 10,000 are Jews." In support of its statement of the dating of the Jewish printing office is its assertion that the first work published on that press was "Besamim Rosh," by Joseph Katz.

The Wiesenthal page goes on to say that the town's Jews caught the brunt of the attacks by both armies and a peasantry incited to pogrom in the Civil War that followed World War I. Denikin's forces which were known for their vicious attacks on Jewish populations attacked and killed forty of the most vulnerable members of the Jewish community before a Jewish self-defence force organized the Jewish population so successfully that Boguslav became a place of refuge for smaller Jewish communities throughout the Kiev area. The self-defense force continued in existence until the Soviets outlawed it several years later in 1923. Half of the pre-war (WW II) population was Jewish, around 6,500 of around 12,000. In WW II, many of the Jewish young men were serving in the Soviet Army and so saved from the devastation of their community but the old, the ill, and those who were not allowed to flee to the interior, were in the jaws of the Nazi killing machine in 1941.

Interviews:

 A 2003 interview with a Kiev resident Leonid Rozenfeld is at Centropa's Witness to a Jewish Century.  He recalls Boguslav in the early part of the century. Leonid describes the town physically, with a great deal of fondness, as he talks about the livelihoods of the Jews in the time of his grandparents, and remembers his father, a soldier in the Russian Army in World War I, helping organize the self-defense units described above. This small quote from that interview shows the details that can be preserved even in twenty-first century interviews of events from early in the previous century:
"My father spoke at a gathering to the young Jewish people appealing to them to organize a self-defense unit to struggle against the bandits. There were about 600 people in their units. They had 250 rifles, two automatic guns, bombs and grenades. I have no idea where they managed to get these weapons. The unit raided nearby villages and towns fighting the bandits. Boguslav became a center of self-defense in Kanev district, Kiev region. The local population sympathized with them and supported them with food and accommodation. They struggled for three years. At the third anniversary of their fighting unit my father made an ardent speech expressing his appreciation of their bravery. In summer 1923 the fighting unit of Boguslav was dismissed since there were no bandits left in the country and the country and its people were starting peaceful reconstruction work." 

Another interview with Boguslav native Yefim Levitsky is at the Southwest Jewish Archives website.  Interviewed May 24, 1999, he recalled many aspects of his life including the time in Boguslav when the Jewish schools were closed by the Soviet authorities.

The Central Archives in Kiev has a collection of metrical books filled in by the State Rabbi for each community, covering different years. Boguslav is reported to have one book from the single year 1848. If you have gotten copies of pages from this book, we'd love if you'd share them with us, your fellow researchers. We might recognize other names on the pages!

The Jewish Studies Institute of the Ukraine had been working on a Guidebook to Jewish Addresses of the Ukraine and among the completed sections in 2003 was Boguslav as appears on this note on their website Jewish Studies Institute The guide contains of seven sections: Kiev region, Podolye, Volyn, Novorossia, Crimea, Galicia, and Bukovina. Special sections are devoted to big cities with the Jewish heritage: Kharkov, Poltava, and Chernigov. The structure of each section is the following: a review article on the region; general history of each locality; a tour route about every populated locality. Work has been finished on preparation of the whole body of articles. Articles on the main sections have been edited – on Poltava, Zaporozhye, Kiev, Kiev region, Zhitomir, Lutsk, Uman, Podolye, Odessa, Chernovtsy, Bukovina, Kharkov, Vinnitsa, Lvov, Cherkassy, Belaya Tserkov, Boguslav, Shargorod, Khmelnitsky, Gusyatin, Satanov, and Medzhibozh.

We want a picture of the large synagogue in Boguslav that was active until turned into apartments in the 1920s. If you have a past or present picture of this building, we'd love a copy to post here.

There is a report in 1919 from THE RUSSIAN RED CROSS COMMITTEE OF ASSISTANCE. ACTING ESTABLISHMENTS AND ESTABLISHMENTS UNDER FORMATION ON AUGUST 1, 1919 which lists among its emergency responses - for the borough of Boguslav - an emergency soup kitchen for 500 people, an public health infirmary for infectious disease, and an orphanage for 300 children.  

If you know of a Boguslav (also called Boslov by its Jewish community) organization that has a past or present existence let us know. There are Boslover organizations in Philadelphia and NYC that continue in existence, there are certainly landsmanschaften and verein records, cemetery records, insurance records, and newspaper reports, on these organizations. In Philadelphia, the Bnai Rubin Congregation was a Boslover synagogue. Mike Tobin has a nice little site about Boguslav, including pictures taken there in the last ten years including some surviving cemetery stones. 

We are also interested in the activities of the Jewish community still in Boguslav. We know that it has a Gemilat Hesed society and is a member of the Regional Organization of Jewish Organizations of Small Towns of Ukraine. But we would like to publish some articles by current residents and emigrants who have moved in the Soviet period and in the period of Ukraine independence.

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Page created by Deborah Glassman,
copyright October 2005
updated November 2005